Bound By The Things She Chooses
by GreenyLove
Summary: In which a modern-day arts student from Earth is tossed unceremoniously into Thedas, bumps into some Witches, learns about destiny, runs away once or twice, and traverses the more dangerous half of this strange new world, all in an effort to fix what someone else broke...before her creepy new tattoos kill her. (Next update: 8/26/18)
1. Ripping Out The Pages

**Full Summary  
** In the age before Ages, countless winters ago, when Auger and Wilder shaman and Clayne priest came together to Foretell the return of the Great Dragons to the skies of Thedas, they predicted need of a vessel: an unmarred youth, pure of body and strong of heart, to walk the Bloodied Path and restore dominion to the mightiest and most destructive of the Maker's creations before their wisdom is lost to mystery.

This is not what Bryony Wolfe signs up for when she unintentionally cuts herself on some weird costume jewelry.

In which a modern-day arts student from Earth is tossed unceremoniously into Thedas, bumps into some Witches, learns about destiny, runs away once or twice, and traverses the more dangerous half of this strange new world, all in an effort to fix what someone else broke...before her creepy new tattoos kill her.

* * *

 _she's gonna find another way back home_  
 _it's written in her blood, oh, it's written in her bones_  
 _she's ripping out the pages, ripping out the pages of your book_

 _#_

When the car horn blares, cutting through the birdsong peace of a foggy, Ohio morning, Bryony Wolfe flinches.

Leave it to Nora to conveniently ignore her texts about _maybe not making one of her grand entrances at the ass-crack of dawn._ In hindsight, the gesture rings of futility. The whole world's a stage, especially to a prodigiously awarded drama student.

Pushing aside the eyelet lace curtains, Bryony spies the glossy, crimson paint of Nora's birthday present—a brand new SUV, because apparently her old sedan was 'looking tired' which Bryony learned was rich kid slang for 'outdated and totally boring'—and audibly grinds her teeth.

Nora Prescott is everything that Bryony's mother pities about the modern world, while Celandine Wolfe leads the kind of life that Nora and her following from MAAS would balk at. _No Netflix? No credit cards?_ _Can you even get takeout in the boondocks?_ Fleetingly, Bryony recalls the moment in Entrepreneurial Arts when she unintentionally let slip that her mom still writes a check at the supermarket and Nora's eyes lit up with impish glee.

That was the moment when Bryony catapulted from 'weird junior transfer student' status straight into the inner circle of the Modern Arts And Sciences prep school. Among the academy elite, crowds parted, lines in the laundry room disappeared, and there were no more solo meals in the library. Bryony wondered if it was curiosity, amusement, or a mix of both that drove the budding starlet's decision to invite her out for lattes after class. Either way, Nora's attachment to Bryony and her 'charming quaintness' was enough for the rest of the group, and the low-income loner from Ohio went from having two friends and a dog to experiencing a constant flurry of activity, a shy moth caught in a butterfly wind.

 _\- texts, hangouts, lunch dates, weekends at the beach, and soon Bryony moves her wallet print of Tahoe to her desk drawer, to make room for her Smoothie Shack loyalty card -_

By the end of her first semester, Bryony has not one, but three social media accounts, knows the details on all the important men in _Vampire Diaries_ , and gets regular pedicures. Her mother would wither in horror, and somehow, that only feeds the fire.

But she isn't at MAAS, now. This is summer break, the only vacation long enough to justify flying halfway across the country to come home, and Bryony has spent the three weeks struggling to meld her new habits, her new friends, her new tastes, her whole new _life,_ with the old patterns of her childhood.

And now Nora Prescott is stepping gingerly out of her expensive car, wrinkling her nose at the muggy, manure-on-a-warm-morning smell of the farm, and _of course_ this is the one morning her mom has decided to cleanse in the river behind the garden and _of course_ she would return home, soaking wet, in one of her gypsy dresses _and no bra_ just in time to greet Nora without Bryony to run interference.

This is it: everything Bryony dreads, rolled up into one perfect moment of _suck._

Grabbing her purse, she bolts for the stairs, backtracks to snatch a hair elastic off the nightstand, and beelines for the front door.

Tahoe lifts his head at the sound of her rapid descent, his tail thumping enthusiastically against the kitchen floor. "Hey, good boy," she greets breathlessly, fishing through a basket of produce and withdrawing two shiny apples, which the spoiled mutt eyes plaintively. Bryony grins, despite her present panic, and grabs a hunk of squirrel jerky from his jar. She tosses it in the air, and doesn't need to wait and watch to know that he catches it with an effortless snap of his jaws.

Voices drift from the driveway as she pauses against the door frame, shoving the apples in her purse and hastily zipping up her combat boots over her jeans.

Her mother speaks. "Bry didn't mention where you girls were going. Plenty to do, this time of year! Grove Pumpkin Festival is a sight to see."

"I'm sure," Nora says, in the same dismissive way she rejects last season's clearance rack, "but I think _Bry_ was going to show us the renaissance fair? It just looked so _cute_ in her photo collage."

The surprise and hurt in her mother's voice is like an arrow of hot guilt, straight to the gut. "The Faire?"

Steeling herself, Bryony slings her purse strap across her shoulder and pushes open the screen door.

Nora spies her instantly and flashes a wide, pristine smile. Her brunette hair is cut in a stylish bob around her fox-like face, offset by sleek sunglasses and plum lipstick that matches the splashy flowers on her sundress. She reminds Bryony of a statue, or perhaps a robot: manufactured to be perfect, phased by nothing, underwhelmed by all. It hurts, how much Bryony _missed_ that, in the riotous chaos of the farm.

"What's up, buttercup!" Nora calls, opening one arm to embrace. Eagerly Bryony half-jogs the last few yards and slips into the hug, purposefully avoiding her mother's gaze.

But Celandine Wolfe is not easy to avoid. "Bry, you didn't say you were going to the Faire! We could have met your friends at the gate, spared them the extra driving time." Bryony hears the sharp intake of breath and knows her mother has noticed her purposefully contemporary wardrobe choices. "You're not going in garb?"

Nora chokes back a peal of laughter. "What's garb?"

Celandine raises an eyebrow. "Period-specific costume. All the regulars wear it. It's half the fun of going. You're about the same size; I'm sure Bry wouldn't mind lending you something from our stash."

Sensing _that_ would be the point of no return – Nora would _never_ allow her to live down the entire closet on the second floor, devoted to costume storage – Bryony rapidly shakes her head, pulling her lips into a tight smile. "No, mom, we don't have time. We have to go."

Right on cue, the car horn honks again. Bryony glances back to see Helene, an exchange student from Greece, resting her sandaled foot on the edge of the steering wheel, wiggling her toes as though threatening to press the horn again. "Are we going to stand around or are we going to see this carnival?"

Another bright laugh escapes from Nora, who pulls open the driver's side door, and begins to arrange the layers of her dress on the seat. Bryony grips her purse strap and flashes her mom a weak, false smile.

Celandine's voice hits her like a slap.

"I don't recognize this girl. If my Bryony is still in there, somewhere, tell her that I miss her." Her tone is even and honest, her words not spoken in spite, to guilt or to embarrass, just to deliver what Celandine Wolfe has always valued over anything else: the truth.

It stirs a longing in Bryony's stomach, and she almost considers abandoning Nora, hugging her mom and offering to rub almond oil through her hair, and make plans to spend the hot day in the shade of the sun porch, drinking iced tea, painting their toe nails, and daring each other to speak in riddles, until one person runs out of rhymes and they wake the foster kittens with their laughter –

But Nora makes an impatient noise, and Bryony sighs sharply. " _Whatever_ , mom."

Helene fiddles with the stereo, and by the time Bryony clicks her seat belt and the shiny SUV rumbles out of the driveway, Elle King's raspy voice fills the cabin. Bryony sings along despite herself. She fiddles with the buckles on her purse and avoids looking in the rearview mirror. As if shame were a shadow that might vanish if she shifts her gaze away.

#

It only takes ten minutes with Nora and Helene, strolling along the sprawling, shaded grounds of the Grove County Renaissance Faire, for Bryony to realize that, despite Nora's assurances over the phone as they finalized plans, neither of her MAAS classmates had any interest in _experiencing this charming tradition_. Not unless that was secret code for _feign interest in the quirky locals and then snigger behind their hands_.

Bryony feels her teeth clench tighter and tighter, until her jaw aches from clenching it too hard. _It is easy to strip away your old skin and pretend to be someone else when your one thousand miles from home._ Here, walking along the familiar dirt paths, past all the same old-fashioned shops, with the smell of lemonade and roast turkey thick in the air, she feels false. As though when she woke up, instead of fumbling with the wrong pants, she stepped into the wrong skin. Worse, the confused stares of the other regulars, the kind though often raunchy Faire enthusiasts who have colored the pages of Bryony's childhood, are difficult to process. One pained, apologetic wave from Bryony, along with a hasty shake of her head, a silent plea to ignore her, and the troupe stays away, their frowns settling on her skin like dust.

Helene and Nora show little interest in the live shows or exhibitions, raise their eyebrows at most of the food. However, the lane of market stalls and Ye Olde Shoppes encircling the grounds quickly draws their attention. Halfheartedly, Bryony trails in their wake as they drift between businesses, surveying handcrafted jewelry and thumbing through racks of bright, specially dyed clothes.

"Who wears this? Like, on a regular basis?" Helene asks with a sneer, holding up a long skirt, falling in gauzy purple flutters from waist to ankle, with silver suns painstakingly stitched along the hem, diamonds for stars, and bits of mirror for the moon. A beautiful piece, one Bryony knows would take weeks to finish.

Nora checks the price tag and snorts. "Hopefully no one, for that price."

"I have one," Bryony cuts in, and immediately regrets it, the judgmental pierce as two sets of eye swing towards her enough to raise a flush on her neck. Despite her brain's protests, her mouth continues. "Mine is green, though, with apple blossoms."

What Bryony had mistaken in the past as delighted interest she now recognizes as incredulous glee. Without letting the opportunity die, Nora snakes an arm around her shoulder and steers her towards a makeshift changing room in the back of the stall.

"You must be in need of another one. If you have space with the rest of your costumes, that is. Besides, this one goes with your eyes."

Before she can protest, she finds herself alone in the back stall as Nora tugs the curtain back across the opening with a decisive snap.

Bryony fingers the fabric, digging the pad of her thumb across the ridged elastic waistband, and wishes desperately to disappear. Hot shame creeps up her neck and sets the back of her ears aflame. How did she spend an entire year acting so foolishly? Had she honestly thought that she belonged with their crowd? How many times had the polished clique laughed _at her_ when she assumed they were laughing _with her?_

Miserably, she finds her memories of the last year tainted now, recalling the subtle and rapid way they would text and realizing they must have been texting one another, even within the same room. _Bryony doesn't know what an eyelash curler is. Bryony's never had espresso. Never been kissed. Never gotten drunk. Never smoked weed. Never had sex._

Inhaling deep and slow, she clenches her eyes shut and tries to shove the heavy knot of tears working its way up her throat. This is such a stupid thing to get worked up over. She's supposed to be above this, this inane peer pressure nonsense. Who cares? Who cares what they think? Who needs to be liked?

 _You do,_ an unkind inner voice reminds her.

Outside the changing room, Helene laughs loudly at something, and Bryony grits her teeth. _The only way out is straight ahead,_ she reminds herself, and focuses on the task of trying on the skirt. Unzipping her boots, she peels off her jeans, leaving her in underwear, bra, socks, and a grey fashion tank top with six crisscrossing spaghetti straps that create triangular patterns on her freckled shoulders. The skirt fabric is soft and light against her legs as she wiggles it over her hips.

On principle, she wants to hate it, to see the garment as something to scoff at, the way that Nora and Helene do. But she cannot stop herself from stroking the breezy layers, relishing the brush of the linen lining against her bare thighs. The hem falls two inches too long, pooling on the top of her feet, but with her boots, maybe…

Fighting off a smile, she sits on the changing room stool, folding the skirt around her thighs as she shoves her feet back into her boots, tugging her socks up around her knees and zipping the boot shaft snuggly around her legs. She catches her reflection in the mirror: pale-skinned and freckled, her coarse cinnamon waves swollen with humidity and fighting against her hasty braid. She has always felt _awkward_ in her own body: her mother's long limbs but without her height, an unremarkable chest and soft baby fat that lingers on her thighs, butt, and upper arms. Combined with a nose that must have been her father's and a full bottom lip, she most often feels like a malformed gazelle. The one who cannot figure out how to lope across the plains as gracefully as her kin, tripping over her own limbs.

 _My eyes,_ she realizes. She likes the skirt because it does, to Nora's credit, compliment the one physical feature Bryony adores. The violet skirt makes her eyes—normally a bright azure—seem richer, more indigo.

Helene's voice makes her jump. "Are you alive in there?"

"Yes," Bryony responds, folding her jeans into a tight ball and stuffing them into her purse. She slides back the curtain and steps back into the shop proper.

Nora appraises her from the back counter, where she taps her foot as though waiting for something. "I like it," she states, then quickly adds, "on you, of course. It works."

Snickering against the back of her hand, Helene adds, "Yes, it's very _festive._ "

"Do you like it?" Nora asks, and when Bryony nods, rewards her with a winsome smile. "Good. I've already paid for it. I wanted you to have something to remember our adventure by."

Warmth and lightness flood her chest, and Bryony cannot stop the pleased grin that lights up her features. "Thanks, Nor."

Helene makes a coughing noise that might be a suppressed laugh, but before Bryony's smile can falter, Nora collects her credit card from the returned shopkeeper, signs the receipt, and slides her arm through Bryony's, leading her back to the main causeway. "You can thank me by pointing out a decent jeweler. I've seen too many girls wandering around with those wire elf ear _things_ and I must investigate. Cathy thinks that Mr. Hudson favors _Midsummer_ for the fall opener, and if _Louise_ thinks she'll get Hermia over _me_ , she's nuts."

Nodding understandingly, Bryony allows Nora to regale her with the latest gossip from the MAAS drama department as they meander down the thoroughfare. Scanning the banners and old-fashioned wooden signs, creaking gently in the breeze, Bryony scouts out a specific shop— _Spun Starlight_ —that carries a variety of accessories, all hand-crafted, both antique and modern. As Faire shops go, _Spun Starlight_ was newer, only appearing two or three summers ago. Out of all the jewelers peddling their wares, Bryony guesses that Nora will appreciate this specific collection.

"Here," she points, having found the sleek black sign with an artful glittering star painted in the center. "This one has nice stuff."

They approach the stall, and immediately Helene appears on Nora's far side, grabbing her hand and pointing at a display, front and center, of the wired ear cuffs Nora sought. The two make a beeline, examining each pair with a critical eye. Bryony hovers, when they begin to debate which pink metal flowers or delicate pearls make better _character accents_ for Nora's audition, Bryony excuses herself to browse.

The stall is long and deep, extending from the main street back into a grove of trees. It has no walls, only wide counters on three sides, all artfully covered with arrangements of jewelry. Necklaces, rings, bracelets, hairpieces, brooches, pins, cuffs, cufflinks, and beyond. Delicate string lights, discreetly arranged along the ceiling beams, wash everything not touched by the sun in a soft white glow.

At first Bryony looks for a necklace, and then thinks it would be nice to find a hair comb to match her skirt. She wanders towards the back wall, where faceless mannequins with impeccable hair model a variety of glittering pieces. Each option is beautifully made, almost otherworldly and fey-like in their delicate construction, but nothing strikes her fancy.

It is the necklace in the corner that catches her eye. Unlike the shop's other ornaments, this piece is not displayed on a velvet cushion nor dangled from an iron jewelry tree. It hangs, almost forgotten, on a small nail, hammered into the post, just below eye level. The chain is fine as spider silk but lacks the same iridescence. Instead it almost vanishes; wearing it would attract no great attention.

The pendant itself seems unremarkable at first glance: nothing more than a thick, smooth cylinder about the length of her middle finger and curved like a parenthesis. The end tapers to a delicate point, not unlike a tooth, but then the piece would be made of bone, wouldn't it? Yet this oddity seems more crystalline, its texture reminiscent of dark water rippling atop endless depths. Sunlight gathers, so subtly, around its graceful edges, stroking the surface like a lover's caress. The not-tooth sips the light and for a moment Bryony believes that it _glows._

Blinking, she shoves her wispy flyaways back from her face. No, it can't be glowing, but _yes_ , it _almost is:_ a stirring within the pendant, a hum beneath the sigh of the wind, an unsettling reddish glimmer from the inner facets. It begins to feel as though the necklace is drinking in the light and the air and the sound, siphoning off life so slowly that the world doesn't notice, and Bryony finds herself stepping closer, reaching out her hand –

"Bry! Have you ever seen earrings like these?" Nora calls.

Whipping around, Bryony jerks her hand back to her side and her heart skips in surprise when something brushes against her wrist. The chain of the strange necklace – the pendant is clutched in her hand. Blood thumps faster through her pulse point. When had she picked it up?

From the front of the stall, Nora holds up something intricate and tinkling that Bryony can't make out against the brightness of the sun. It's high noon, or nearly there, and the breeze has died, leaving a humid thickness to the air.

"What?" Bryony says, the sound catching in her throat. She cannot make her heart calm down, nor her arms stop shaking.

Helene appears from around a standing rack of brooches. "I'm parched. Is there somewhere we can eat? Preferably in the shade?"

"One hopes," Nora commiserates, lifting a manicured hand to shield her eyes from the sun, peering back into the shade of the booth. "Bry? What's up?"

Bryony coughs, trying to clear the scratchy feeling from her throat. She turns back to the corner, making a deliberate effort to put the freaky necklace back on its nail. The pendant slips from her hand, the chain wound around her fingers. Her gaze snags on the unexplained glow, which despite the faint insistence of her rational mind, seems to have grown stronger. Curious to a fault, Bryony lifts the pendant closer, twirling it between her fingers, searching it from every angle for some kind of light source, or jeweler's stamp, or –

"Bry," Nora snaps, impatiently. "What are you even looking at?"

It's an innocent motion, turning to show Nora the necklace, to ask if _she_ sees the weird light, to cajole her into ridiculing it so it loses its enthralling qualities. So they can toss it aside and go gorge on cheese pastries and stuffed peppers and sausages made from ox. So that by the time the afternoon joust rolls around, the necklace will be a forgotten thing once more.

She turns and her boot snags on the fluttering hem of her new skirt, yanking her off balance to the right. On reflex her hand shoots out to stop her fall on the edge of the center island – the hand which grasps the necklace, and Bryony is not quite nimble enough to drop the necklace first –

Her half-open palm smashes into the counter's edge, and her own weight forces the tip of the not-tooth into her flesh hard enough for three drops of blood to drip down the curve.

Bryony has less than a second to register _that_ pain before the world shatters.

Beneath her, the ground bucks and heaves hard enough to splinter the stall's roof, sending Bryony to her knees in a shower of splinters and dust. She screams but can't hear it over the roar of the air as it rushes upwards. Leaves, twigs, and bits of gravel fly past, nicking her arms and neck. Her eyes follow the current and find the wrongness: a jagged void, bleeding ghastly green light, too bright to stare at directly, and a rush of dizziness warns Bryony that she has clenched her fists in terror. Looking down, she finds the not-tooth has lodged deeper into flesh and muscle, blood like a waterfall down her wrist, splattering the ground, dripping on her thighs.

All in a matter of seconds, precious seconds that terror extends –

The last thing Bryony Wolfe hears is a voice she has known since birth, shouting against the thunder of the void. She tries to call back— _Mom, Mom, Mommy, help, please!—_ but the green light surrounds her, and it feels so much like burning alive that her cries turn to raw screams and she blacks out as the fire pours down her throat.

#

By the time Celandine fights against the flood of panicked Faire-goers and reaches the site of the rift, the hole in the Veil has vanished, leaving a stall in shambles, the causeway scattered with trinkets and trash, the grass shredded with the roots of upturned trees. In the heart of the destruction is a blackened circle, a scorch mark on the earth, and little else.

By the time the local authorities arrive and wrap the scene in caution tape, advising the Faire grounds to close, scratching their heads and phoning for the bomb squad, Celandine is back in her truck, zooming down the country road as fast as she can stomach. She lifts her bag onto her lap and fumbles through its contents, pulling out a small planner. She flips open to a paper-clipped page, with the current year's calendar, and double-checks the date of the approaching solstice.

By the time Celandine unlocks the door to the garden shed and steps into her stillroom, she has an idea, or at least, a chance. Pulling a worn leather sketchbook from its shelf, she opens to a diagram of an intricate ritual circle, with meticulous instructions crammed into the margins. She does not—cannot—think of futility, or what her own teachers will say, or the danger of using her full magic after decades of little cantrips.

She thinks only of Bryony, of her sunny-haired bright-eyed sticky-fingered child, thrown into the Fade –

No.

Not thrown.

 _Yanked._

#

In a mountain clearing far, far away, in a place not quite here and not quite there, a young witch catches the burn of ozone on the evening breeze and spies flickers of green edging the thunderheads in the distance. Gold eyes narrow, and she slides off her rocky perch, leaving the giant, ornate mirror quiet and liquid dark in the shadows of sunset.

Her son meets her at the cottage door. He is perceptive enough, at seven years, to recognize the signs as they appear. The willful set of his mouth reminds the witch unexpectedly of the boy's father, and memories have her fingers tracing the crest of Highever stamped onto her metal bracelet.

"What comes?" asks the boy.

"Nothing good," mutters the witch as she motions the boy inside and turns to bar the door.

* * *

 **A/N** : I have no explanation for this.

Grease up the wheels on your Feels Machines, kids! It's gonna be a bumpy ride!

 _The lyrics at the chapter beginning as well as the title of this story are taken from the song "Wilderwoman" by Lucius. I claim no ownership, I don't profit, I'm not worthy, etc._

Cross-posted on AO3 under the same s/n. Go there for the even _more mature_ version!

Peace and love, readers.


	2. Witching Hours

**Part Two – Witching Hours**

 **Summary:** In which Bryony of Ohio awakens in a strange place, an immeasurable distance from home, and has a bad time of it.

#

The darkness is deep and numbing, in the likeness of a horrid burn just after the skin is seared away. An absence of sensation before agony weeps from the bone. _Shock_ , a very far off voice supplies, _this is called shock._

She cannot know how long this darkness lasts. She has an instinct that insists she is not quite asleep, but not quite not-asleep either, like a nightmare where beseeching yourself to wake fails because _you are already awake._ Consciousness ebbs and flows, and her ability to question the nature of her present state is handicapped. Her body is here, but so numb she barely feels it, like her mind is her entire body.

 _Do I still…? Is this…death?_

Consciousness ebbs and flows.

If she quiets the faint awakenings of awareness, this state is almost like sleeping. It is close enough to trick herself, to hide from of the troublesome insistence that something irreversible has occurred, that she is different, that— No. She will remain "asleep." She can fake this.

She does not care how long she drifts.

#

As abruptly as her deadened sleep begins, it ends. The darkness heaves and then thins as her stomach rolls. The dark whistles past her and she is aware, acutely, that she is falling and the darkness has become the air.

Color returns in dazzling eruptions: the green light blossoms around her and she _flows_ with it, a fallen leaf in a river's current. It spills her out on a wet mat of thick meadow grass and then dissipates like smoke, curling unnaturally through the air with no mind for the downpour. Her senses return painfully quick: the icy slap of storm wind, the ooze of mud around her fingers and knees, the thunder that sets her ears ringing, the coppery spittle in her mouth. Spots dance in her vision but as she blinks she begins to see stark tree trunks, rippling grass, the sheen of granite boulders lined white with every crack of lightning. Wind whips the rain sideways. It is dark but not unendingly so, as though somewhere beyond the roiling clouds there is, constantly, the moon.

Dull pain sinks into her muscles and her body urgently wobbles upright even as her mind struggles to catch up. Every fiber of her being screams _danger_ and _wrong_ and _what is happening_ and her skirt is hopelessly tangled around her legs, clinging in the wet. Blood pounds through her head, her thoughts like an avalanche, a slow crack followed by a rushing fall.

 _I am alive, but how?_

 _Awake, but where?_

 _Why can't I scream?_

That is when she realizes that she has been trying to yell, to call for help, announcing her pain and confusion not unlike a squalling infant, and that the raspy scratching noise isn't coming from the storm-tangled branches but from _her mouth._ Inhaling, she tries again, but can only force out a wet, wordless wheeze before hot pain snarls in her throat and she doubles over in a fit of coughs.

A harsh wind sends her stumbling against a tree, pale fingers scraping as she fights to stay upright. These tall trees have white bark and thin, high branches, a poor source of cover against this torrent.

 _Where is safety?_

 _Where is north?_

 _Where am I?_

Already, her strength fades, her vision tunneling. Something draws her frantic gaze: a tiny blue wisp, swaying gently, disappearing and reappearing through the trees and rocks. A tall figure holds it, like a lantern with no frame, and ahead of the light-bringer lopes a large shadow with four legs, sniffing along the ground.

Fear blossoms behind the girl's ribs and even as her knees give out she scrambles on her elbows and kicks out her feet, trying to put the tree against her back.

Hunting for a weapon in the drenched mast littering the forest floor, her right hand snags against something sharp, a thorny bramble. With a hiss she draws her palm against her chest as the lightning turns everything silver— _What?_

Furiously, she grinds her opposite hand across her eyes, pushing aside her sopping bangs, staring against the shadows at her right palm. The lightning flashes again, impossibly long and close, and she _sees it._

A grievous puncture wound, a twisted knot of blackened flesh, at the base of her thumb. Blossoming from her wound are three dark rivulets, running gracefully, with impossible symmetry, down the white flesh of her wrist like trails of blood, but they do not smudge when she rubs them. As she stares a fourth line _curls upwards_ from the source, journeying with alarming speed towards her pointer finger. It tapers past her middle joint and ends with a bloody drop to match the first three and _she sees it_ and feels, for the first time, the weight of a starlight chain around her neck, a curved pendant against her skin, and _she remembers –_

Bryony is screaming, soundless as suffocation, slamming her hand repeatedly against the ground, wordlessly pleading for whatever this is, this nightmare, this curse, to _stop, please stop_ , when the four-legged shadow woofs close by, loud and deep, and then whines until the light-bringer passes it, leather boots squishing through the mud.

"Well, well. What have we here?" an unfriendly voice muses, as the wisp vanishes and the figure brings a gloved hand closer and presses two fingers against the crown of her head.

Something runs over her, like syrupy sunlight spilling down her spine, but it comes too suddenly, like drowning from the inside out. Bryony gasps but can only resist for seconds before she slumps sideways, out cold.

#

The world is silent and smells like straw.

Inhale, exhale.

She drifts in and out of dreamless sleep, easing into wakefulness as though floating slowly upwards through a body of tranquil water.

 _I am very sick of sleeping_ , she thinks. This rest is more fragile than her previous oblivion. The need for answers pushes her awake, her eyes peeling open and squinting against the flicker of a nearby fire. Blurry shapes slowly sharpen into focus: a great stone fireplace with a thick wooden mantel, a cast-iron cauldron, a shelf of clay jars, hanging boughs of herbs, a basket of animal skulls. On the opposite wall are two windows with latched shutters, and beyond, the soft murmur of rain, the last remnant of the great storm.

She shifts and winces at the deep ache in her limbs, the rawness in her chest, the warm pulsing in her right hand like a second, tiny heartbeat. Thick blankets cover her from chin to toe, topped with a heavy brown fur. Someone unwound her hair, and it clings to her neck and forehead, damp with either rain or sweat. She thinks she is alone.

Moving is a titanic struggle. Her body feels lethargic, all stone bones and joints that creak in sore protest at the mere action of stretching her legs beneath the covers. When it becomes clear that sitting up will require aid, she turns her head first to the left, looking for some sign that whoever owned the cabin was nearby. Finding nothing but a rough-hewn wardrobe and a faded trunk, she rolls her head to the right—

— and comes face to face with a pair of curious grey eyes.

The eyes widen, and the face they belong to pinches with something akin to _calculation._ A young boy, no older than seven or eight, has by all appearances been observing her while she slept, leaning his elbows on the edge of the bed. He sits up straight now, withdrawing his arms to his sides. His black hair curls thick around his ears. He sports a narrow nose, stubborn chin, sharp cheekbones dusted very lightly with butterscotch freckles, and long dreamer's lashes around his grey eyes. It occurs first to Bryony that he is too short to be the light-bringer, and second, that he is the most startlingly beautiful child she has ever seen.

He tilts his head, eyes darting from her face, to her hands, to her own eyes, which are glassy with pain.

"Hello," he says, in a stiff, uncertain way. "I'll get Mother."

 _Mother?_

Rising from his stool, he dusts bits of straw and fur off the front of his plain maroon tunic and disappears from view. Bryony rolls her head back to center in time to catch a snatch of pearly grey light as the cabin's only door shuts behind the child.

She is alone, truly, for some time, during which she drifts in and out of a very light sleep. Somewhere beyond a flock of ravens startle from their perch, cawing indignantly, and she shakes herself fully awake. A deep _woof_ from nearby helps Bryony remember that _maybe there was a dog_ , but before she can decide, the door opens, and in steps the witch.

Or rather, in steps a rather tall, somewhat pale, absolutely fearsome-looking woman whom Bryony guesses is a witch. _Why else would you walk around a wet forest dressed like that?_

Hard-hearted gold eyes flick to her face before the witch's attentions snap to the fire, where something is just now beginning to smoke in the cauldron. She checks it, stirring once, before speaking to the boy, who has appeared in the doorway. "Nearly done. Fetch two sprigs elfroot and one of virgin's wart from the furrows, dear one."

"Yes, Mother," the boy intones, though he fidgets instead of leaving. "Can Boogie come in now? It's very wet outside."

The witch sniffs and turns away, shedding her cloak. "How fitting. _Boogie_ a very wet dog." It is clear from her tone that her dislike of the canine in question starts with his name and doesn't stop. "We cannot have our guest catching a chill, on top of her many other ailments."

Something pointed in her delivery makes the boy's eyes widen and he nods sharply before disappearing, the door creaking shut behind him.

The witch vanishes into a small alcove, presumably to hang up her blood red cloak.

It takes Bryony longer than she'd like to find her voice, a faint, lost thing she must unearth from the scratched heat in her lungs. Memories of the green fire slicking down her throat have her clenching and unclenching her jaw as she forces her heavy tongue to work. It is a heady relief to hear her own voice emerge, however rough.

"I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore."

 _I sound like a smoker._

The witch reappears and smiles tightly, without mirth. "Most assuredly. It is very clear you are not from…nearby. Is _Kansas_ the name of your homeland?"

"No," Bryony begins, and must stop to wet her cracked lips. It seems irrelevant to explain the political and geographical landscape of the United States to a woman in a leather bikini top, so she backpedals. "Or…yes? It's a…country near my home. My homeland is called Ohio."

The witch eyes her sharply; a flicker of recognition flashing across her sharp face before it disappears behind carefully maintained apathy. "It matters not." And yet a tiny voice within Bryony _insists_ that it does. "You are now somewhere unfamiliar. But how? Are you a mage?"

Her heartbeat accelerates. "No? I'm not anything."

"Then it stands that you must be something," the witch shoots back in the manner of one accustomed to speaking in riddles. With each pointed question, she steps close to the edge of the bed, until she looms over her captive patient. "How did you come to be _here,_ in this particular place of solace? What spell did you craft to bring you to this _specific pocket,_ far adrift in the Fade, that I have striven to keep secret? Mundane mortals with no magic do not open rifts and traverse realities at their leisure."

Somehow, Bryony finds the strength to push herself up with trembling arms, steadying herself with a white-knuckled grip on the low headboard. She glares at the witch. "I don't know! I didn't craft a spell. Some crazy green shit _blew up in my face_ and now I'm here. It wasn't on purpose and I'm not even sure it was real and I'm very much not a mage."

Gold eyes glisten and the witch's mouth twists into a smug smile. "Then, pray tell, _how can we understand each other?"_

Bryony blinks, brows knitting in confusion. Haven't they been speaking English? It sounds like English, to her ear, but how would the witch know English?

How did her son?

Folding her arms across her, the witch narrows her eyes until they are but slits, snakelike. "You appear confused. Did your teacher not inform you of magic's first rule?"

Her tone is scathing. Bryony flinches, her dislike for the witch growing by the second. It seemed immensely unfair that the witch be so condescending over Bryony's inadequacy, when the study— _magic_ —shouldn't exist in the first place. "No," she half-mumbles, because it seems easier than explaining how unlikely it is that any of this is actually happening.

 _—except for that small, insistent part of her that has already accepted that the cabin, the green fire, the necklace, all of it is absolutely real, and nothing will ever be the same—_

The witch smirks. "Magic's first rule is like many things in magic: simple and yet astonishingly profound. It states that _sorcery shall always be known to itself._ You and I can communicate, as we are both known to sorcery, and thus…"

Carefully, Bryony puzzles out. "So…magic is…the same in every country? Mine and yours?"

"All is one, in the beginning as in the end," the witch intones.

A short silence falls, broken only by excited barking and the carefree laughter of a boy, growing nearer to the cabin by the second. The witch's golden eye snap to the door and then back to her patient, who has managed to sit up against the pillows.

Suddenly Bryony finds the witch very close, her long pale fingers twisting in the fabric of her tank top, yanking her up and forward until less than a hand's breadth remains between their noses.

"If you come to my sanctuary, from _Ohio_ or anywhere else, with the intent of harming me or my son, desist at once, or I will rend you from all existence without hesitation."

The door swings open before Bryony can breathe, and in bounds a gigantic dog. Two ears, one tattered and one whole, flick forward with interest as two bright brown eyes land on her face. The canine shakes with excitement, and if he possessed a full tail instead of a fuzzy stump, Bryony imagines he would be wagging it. His physical appearance fascinates her: muscles packed upon muscles, a boxy head, brindled red fur, and far too much intelligence in his eyes. The dog woofs, deafeningly, and pads to the nearest side of the bed, digging his nose through the blankets and furs, seeking some part of her that he can sniff.

Bryony finds herself grinning—he reminds her of Tahoe, with his polite yet slobbery greetings—and with much effort she moves her right hand closer, tentatively stretching her fingers out from beneath the covers—

The cold texture of his snout barely registers against the pads of her fingers before the witch shouts a warning in a language Bryony doesn't know. A bright, white snap of _actual frost_ explodes in the air before the dog's face, sending him into a fit of whines and anxious bars before he scurries into the side room. Bryony yanks her hand away, burrowing her freezing fingers beneath her thigh and swallowing back a nauseated moan as the _magic_ —as she can only infer—makes her veins feel bizarre.

A ripple of something wrong and strange, from hand to shoulder to heart.

Silence floods the cabin so forcefully and completely that Bryony first believes it to be some side effect of the witch's spell. Yet after a handful of seconds, waiting for her ears to ring or pop, she realizes that the forest is still gently rustling and the hearth fire is still crackling and the silence is not only silence, but something more like dread.

The witch's eyes are more black than gold.

Her son evaluates slyly, grey eyes flicking from face to face behind his thick lashes, his small mouth twisted and pale.

"I'm sorry?" Bryony croaks, watching, horrified, as the dog slowly peaks out from the side room and shuffles towards the boy with his head low and tattered ears flat against his head. "What happened? I'm – I don't know—!"

The witch interrupts. "No. You don't. And it is time we changed that."

Quicker than Bryony can follow, the dark-haired woman strides to the bed, grabs the edges of the blankets, and yanks them off with strength belying her frame. Bryony yelps, scrambles to defend her modesty, and then screams, as three things click together in rapid succession:

—she is naked, completely, butt-ass naked—

—she is more pale than _ever_ , so milky that her freckles are stark as cinnamon on fresh whipped cream—

—the entire surface area of her right arm _is covered in black tattoos_ —

This is how Bryony finds herself an immeasurable distance away from home, biting her knuckles bloody and wheezing through a panic attack, crying on the shoulder of a quiet young boy who politely drapes a soft quilt across her quivering shoulders while his strange mother turns her back, tossing this and that into the bubbling cauldron. She reappears in the edge of Bryony's watery vision minutes later, holding a squat mug of steaming soup.

"Drink this. Slowly, if you can manage," she instructs, somewhat stiltedly, as though she is far more comfortable playing sorcerer than caregiver. "There are clothes in the wardrobe. I do not have much to spare, but seeing as your own garments were all but ruined in the storm, I see no other option."

Bryony takes the mug from the witch, exhaling shakily as the warmth gently seeps into her fingers. She cannot quite look at her right arm. Even her fingers, with their new black lines and teardrops and chaotic whorls, seem to belong to someone else as they wrap around the handle.

The witch whispers a word or two to the boy, who rises to leave, but not before patting Bryony awkwardly on the middle of her back. Both mother and son make for the exit, the boy and dog disappearing out into the pearly mists.

With a backward glance, the witch says, "When you are ready, join me in the clearing. I will explain."

"Explain what?" Bryony dares to ask.

"Your destiny," says the witch, with eyes like golden ice.

#

So, turns out, when I said "updates Wednesdays" I actually meant "updates sporadically on days that rhyme with Wednesday"

(actually in March after I posted part one, I got promoted and then we started trying to buy a house? and that's grossly time consuming, but now that's all settled down, so I think I can finally! write! again!)


	3. Of Wonders Wild & New

The sun has nearly cleared the treetops by the time Bryony emerges from the cabin. Lingering mist curls in the purple shadows of the forest floor, wavering like water around the dark-leafed ferns. There is nothing civilized in sight but the cabin and a lopsided woodshed and the neat furrows of reddish dirt from which grow an abundance of plants, only a few of which Bryony recognizes from Celandine's riotous garden—

—A grimace. It hurts, to think of her mother.

On a tall stump nearby, the boy sits with his legs swinging over the edge. Two leather balls sit next to him. Almost immediately, Boogie bounds out of the forest brush, clutching a third ball in his massive jaws. He surrenders it to the boy, who reaches for another and holds it up to eye level. The ball quivers and then effortlessly shoots off into the trees. Again, Bryony's arm tingles, though not as strongly as before. She draws closer as Boogie barks and dashes off, gleeful in his pursuit.

"So you can do…magic? As well?"

Her presence does not seem to startle the boy, but perhaps her question does. He scrunches his nose, considering his answer. "I can, yes," he says hesitantly. "But not like you. Mother said I am not supposed to talk to you about magic."

Now it is Bryony's turn to be surprised. She waves her hands disarmingly, offering him a shaky smile. "That's okay. I was just curious. Uh, my name's Bryony. I never really got to introduce myself." Out of habit she offers her hand, but withdraws it immediately when the sunlight catches the black tattoos. She tucks her hands behind her back instead.

The boy beams at her, revealing a small, endearing gap between his front teeth. "I'm Kieran. The mabari is named Boogie. It is nice to meet you." A crash in the underbrush signals the return of Boogie, ball in mouth, merry expression on his canine face. Kieran retrieves the ball and sends off another in the same manner as before, grinning as the— _what had he called it? Mabari?_ —woofed and darted off again, faster than Bryony had ever seen a dog run.

They watch until Boogie disappears amongst the ferns before Kieran glances at Bryony and points farther down the hill, where a small footpath is visible, winding through the shade of the trees. "Mother is waiting for you," he says, suddenly somber. "Her name is Morrigan. She can tell you many things. I can hear your questions but I don't know the answers. My magic is old but not...like yours."

He sounds sympathetic.

Icy shivers dart down Bryony's spine.

She bites her bottom lip between her teeth, staring blankly at the trail. There is a part of her that holds fast, still, to the belief that she will wake up any minute now. Like a movie where things go horribly wrong but then the day starts over, the horrible things confined to the realm of nightmare.

But she can feel the wind and taste the sourness of her unwashed mouth and see everything in perfect clarity, not in the disjointed way of dreams.

 _This is real,_ she tells herself, _this is actually happening._

With a gulp and a nod, Bryony steels her nerves and strides off down the path.

Aside from the weight of her unanswered questions, sitting like a heavy stone in her stomach, it is a pleasant enough morning, if a bit chill. Her borrowed garments are all sewn of weatherproof fabrics, for which she is thankful.

Morrigan spoke truly when she indicated that most of Bryony's clothing was ruined by the rain: when Bryony drank enough soup to feel life creep back in her bones, she spotted a basket of fabric tatters and recognized her shredded tank and salvaged squares of denim from her jeans. A few long, ribbon-like strips of purple gauze sat on top, from her skirt—and that stung, to think of Nora and Helene and wonder if they were hurt. One thicker strip faired better than the rest, with most of the embroidery and a few mirror-moons still in tact. Bryony grabbed this and used it to secure her hair in a lumpy knot.

Digging through the wardrobe Morrigan mentioned, Bryony was immediately relieved to discover a drawer of undergarments! Recognizable and functional undergarments! The bras were bandeau style, strapless and broad, stitched from soft linen. Based on the on-hand evidence, Morrigan's chest was larger that Bryony's, but after a moment of rifling, she found one with extra padding that likely helped the witch defy gravity, but would suit Bryony's needs. Laces beneath the armpits cinched the band snugly around her chest.

Underwear was a similarly easy fix, though Bryony was startled to learn that medieval witches wore thongs.

The wardrobe's hanging space was filled with dresses and heavy skirts, while the wide bottom drawers held plainer, less intricate pants—or did they call them breeches?—and long-sleeved shirts. Conscientious of the fact that the witch has already done _a lot_ for someone she barely knows, Bryony thumbed past anything that looked too nice. She ended up tugging on a well-worn pair of leather leggings that cinched up the side of one thigh, along with a soft tunic colored like Lake Erie on a misty morning.

Her boots, she was delighted to discover, had weathered the storm well, and waited for her by the cabin's door along with a pair of socks with patches in both heels.

Now, walking through the woods, Bryony is grateful for that small blessing. "At least my feet won't hurt," she mutters as she elbows a low hanging frond out of her face. The tunic is a bit large and the leather will have chafed the skin of her thighs before the day is over. Blistered feet would have been one too many things to worry over.

The path, some manner of deer trail worn wider by human feet, takes her down into the woods, where the light gets dim and greenish, the sounds of wildlife echoing through the branches that weave almost lattice-like far above her head. Broken only by the occasional boulder, the forest is wild and yet—no, she cannot shake the feeling that something about this place is false. Birds chirp and the ferns rustle and curious ears flick her way before small bodies dart into the gloom, but it seems staged, or auto-tuned into something inauthentic.

 _The colors! The colors just aren't quite right. Maybe it's magic, or maybe that's really how forests are here?_

Bryony flinches at the sight of the birches, stark white sentinels standing guard amongst the thinning trees around the clearing. Recollections of her arrival flood her mind. Impossible—to be one place, and then be no place, and then be…here? Where exactly was here? Most disturbingly she recalls the raw burning in her chest, her inability to scream. She swallows, her right hand fluttering to her throat. Something weighs heavy in her palm when her fingers brush her pulse—

She is aware, without warning, of the heady rush of her own blood through her body, brimming beneath her skin. Her heartbeat slows—or maybe her perception of time does—and she feels something sharp catch on her shoulder where her fingers had just been.

The claw-tooth pendant is in her hand when she draws it away.

Biting the inside of her cheek before she screams, Bryony shakes her hand as though trying to dislodge a bug, but the claw-tooth dangles from its starlight chain, slipping around her fingers like an elusive web. Greenish sunlight catches the chain and Bryony realizes it winds around her neck, looped gracefully across her collarbones before disappearing down her tunic.

 _I never put it on! I didn't—how am I wearing it without knowing?_ Her mind screams for answers, terror shooting through her like electric shocks. Her blood pounds against her skin, making her vision dance double, and she swears a small black drop of wrongness begins to bead on the tip of the tooth—

The witch's voice cuts through her panic.

"Stop!" she commands coolly, grabbing Bryony's wrist and forcing her grip to slacken. The claw-tooth drops and Bryony is aware of it thumping harmlessly against her stomach before it…vanishes, in a tricky wink of sunlight.

"Where did it go?" she asks between hectic breaths.

"It is a part of you, now. It can no more be removed than the marks on your skin," Morrigan says quietly. "Come. 'Tis warmer, in the sunlight."

With a gentle but firm tug on her wrist, Morrigan leads her on a short, weaving path through the birches to a wide meadow, drenched with sunlight and meadow grass and the sweetness of wildflower. It would be a fairly standard, idyllic meadow were it not for the gigantic gilded mirror?

"Nice décor," Bryony says without thinking, and is surprised when the witch giggles.

"Yes," she says, her eyes alight with memory. She drops Bryony's wrist to toy with her own bracelet. "I have a fondness for pretty things. Though this goes far beyond a mere vanity. 'Tis a gateway, back to Thedas. I believe it acted like a beacon, pulling you close enough to break out of the Fade." This time, when her eyes flash, it is with warning. "It is dangerous to the likes of you. You must never touch it."

"Seems reasonable," Bryony agrees, peering at it from where they've stopped, a healthy distance away.

The meadow slopes down to a cliff, where the forest drops away into sky and the suggestion of trees, far below. The mirror, framed by two impressive boulders, sits majestically on the edge of the bedrock. Its surface is so smooth, and oddly non-reflective, inky and fathomless. There is no suggestion of the meadow, or the women present, anywhere upon it. "Don't touch the freaky mirror. Got it."

The witch gestures to their surroundings and Bryony notices they stand in a cleared circle of earth, ringed with a very small palisade of sharpened sticks. A fire pit is dug out in the center. It seems familiar, like an old Irish faerie circle. Bits of dark feathers and wild furs have been tucked and placed amongst the stakes, whose tips have been charred black.

 _Like a faerie circle, but not for the nice faeries._

"Please sit," invites the witch.

Bryony waits until Morrigan herself kneels, and then sits across from her. The witch inhales, and while Bryony does not catch her exhale, the meadow seems to mute itself, in sound and color. It has the same effect as a door closing. This is a private space, now.

 _Feet first, Bry._ "Where am I?"

"A Fade-pocket. An island," she amends when Bryony's confusion is clear. "in sea of dreams and madness, accessible only by mages, or artifacts of great power. Once I believe there were many such places, perhaps entire secret cities or countries, but now they are scarce. It was with much struggle and danger that I claimed this place as a haven for me and my child. There are very few others who know of its existence." The same suspicion and ire from the cabin is back in her gold gaze.

Bryony bristles. "I'm not here on purpose! I doubt anyone followed—." Her eyes widen and a cold fear punches her stomach. "Could someone else have come here? I was in public, at Faire—at a festival. My friends, could they—!"

A raised hand quiets her. "No one but you fell out of the Fade. I did attempt to follow your path back through the Fade, to see from where I had been assaulted..."

"…but?" There was definitely a but.

"It was impossible to trace to the source. Your native home, this 'Ohio' of yours, is very, very far away. If anyone else was pulled into the Fade, they did not come out here. More likely, they have not come out at all."

Her memory of the not-place, the deep and formless sleep, is elusive. Why had she finally 'fallen out?' Would she have existed like that, if it could count as existing, for…the rest of her life? The rest of time? The idea of Nora or Helene stuck in that state, without end….

Clammy nausea washes up from her stomach. It is an effort, not to puke up her soup.

The feeling from the clearing, on the first night, returns; the sticky sunlight down her spine. This time it is more like a gentle drip than a flood. It clears the acid from her throat immediately and softens the edges of her stomach. Morrigan has two fingers held together in the air, extended towards Bryony. She lowers them. "The truth can be unsettling."

"Was that magic?"

"Yes." She rubs her fingers on her leather skirts with mild disgust, wiping away some unseen residue. "I have no love of Creation magic, but my son is so prone to climbing things he shouldn't."

Bryony's expression softens. "He seems like a really good kid."

"He is." The claws extended again. "And it is my duty as protector to keep us both from harm. Procure the Heart."

 _Say what, now?_ "I'm…not sure what you're referring to."

Irritation carves hard lines around Morrigan's mouth. "The necklace, the pendant that marked your arm with its magic. Bring it into the physical realm."

 _Your destiny._

A thousand questions bubble in her chest, but she pushes them down. It feels like a test. This is her chance to prove some kind of control over the jewelry that uprooted her life. She glances down and sees no sign of the claw or its chain. Yet its presence is an unseen weight against her skin.

Moments ago, on the edge of the wood, it appeared when she touched her pulse. She had no desire to trigger that reaction again, so maybe just thinking about…blood? Morrigan called it 'the Heart' so perhaps if she just closes her eyes and directs her focus to the fluttering thump of her own heart…

The air reeks of copper.

Bryony glances down. The claw-tooth is clenched in her fist.

Morrigan's eyes are bright as lanterns. Unnatural green fire erupts in the pit between them, licking hungrily at the charred stones. The witch looms up on her knees and reaches across, her hand hovering inches away from her arm.

"Do you trust me?"

The truth is indeed unsettling. "You are the only person I can trust."

A flash of something winks across Morrigan's face, the memory of something sad. It leaves as quickly as it visits, steeling the witch's resolve. "Then let us learn its secrets."

 _Your destiny._

Morrigan snares her wrist in an iron grip. Bryony's protests die on her tongue when the witch shoves her entire hand into the flame. Then, she can only scream.


	4. Come, The Gathering Rain

_Come, the quickening feet that fall_

 _Come, the gathering rain_

 _Suffer me as I suffer you_

 _Hearing you speak of pain_

\- from 'Blood I Bled' by The Staves

#

She screams for two heartbeats and then ceases, going rigid under Morrigan's grasp. The witch watches the outsider as her eyes gloss over, fixated on the Heart as it pulses and squirms like a bug pinned to a flat surface. The girl is shocked in place, half hunched over with her other arm wrapped tight around her abdomen. No more screaming, though she does emit a low whine through her teeth. The sound of someone on the verge of shattering.

Morrigan grimaces and steps away.

Though it was almost two decades ago, she still remembers how the spells feels as it peels you apart, until only the fundamentals of self remain. How ruthless it is, at stripping down to the bones of things.

The first time she took the shape of an animal, at age six, Flemeth had built a similar fire and bathed her in it.

A familiar flicker on her awareness draws her mind from those dangerous memories. She sighs. "What have I said about spying, Kieran?"

Her son shuffles out from the thicket at the meadow's edge, looking sheepish. Sprigs of wild juniper stick out of his thick curls. Between that and the stains of grass and muddy paws on his tunic, he looks so painfully youthful that she allows herself one moment to pretend that he is _just_ a child, with years before him to get drunk on sunshine and mischief.

But his gaze already slides around her, to the outsider hunched over the smokeless flame. Something snags his attention. A furrow forms in the witch's brow, and she tracks his gaze up, to the sky above the trees.

"Is she meeting Her now?" Kieran asks, pointing to the presence that Morrigan herself can barely discern, drifting far above, lazy as a hawk on columns of air. It is no more than a stir of the clouds and the flickering shadow of expansive wings.

"I believe so."

"Will she die sooner? Or later?"

It cracks her heart, another fracture among thousands, for her son to speak so casually of death.

"What do you think?"

Kieran grows thoughtful. "She will fight, as Father does. She will not go gently."

The outsider girl is shivering now, though her face is tight with focus and no small amount of anger. The sun catches the gold in her hair. With a huff, Morrigan reconciles that Donovan Cousland would like this outsider, and have more than one useful piece of advice…for he too had looked upon his death, as the girl is doing now, and said, _Not me._

Kieran steps into the circle. "May I wait with you, Mother?"

"Yes."

She sits and watches the girl. The boy sits and looks up, watching the ghost of the dragon glide through the clouds.

#

First, there are only two sounds.

Two heartbeats: her own, and the one clenched in her fist. The beats are arrhythmic; the Heart beyond her body beats thunderously slow, almost languid in comparison to her quick, mortal pumps.

Gradually, she becomes aware of other things. A hot wind blows from all directions, dragging at her clothes and hair. The ground beneath her is hard, uneven rock, digging into her shins. When she blinks the green spots out of her eyes, the sight that greets her steals her breath.

Somehow she has gone from meadow to mountainside, kneeling on the edge of a narrow ridge. It is so _tall_ —this must be the tallest mountain to ever exist, she decides. Below, so far below her stomach rolls, dark thunderheads swirl threateningly. Above, a thinning mist obscures the mountain's peak. Beyond this mountain lies a foreboding skyscape: an endless vista of crags and forgotten plateaus, emerging like islands from an ocean of storms.

The Heart— _that is what Morrigan called it, right?_ —pulses with a steady reddish light. The sleeve of dark ink on her arm seems to shift in the glow. The markings appear as nothing more specific that hundreds of lines, curling in and out and amongst themselves…

…and yet also appear like a seamless tribute to nature's predators, all claw and teeth and feather and scale woven with smoke. They swim like optical illusions beneath Bryony's gaze, and for a second she thinks they spell words or phrases, but in no language she has ever studied.

"Why am I _here?_ " she yells, furious, into the swirling storms below. The Heart thrums like a demon and she clenches her fist tighter, tighter, and tighter – "What's the point? _What's the fucking point?_ "

She did not expect answers to come from above. Near the top of the tallest mountain in existence, logically, something would come from below. Or at least hobble out at eye level, some wizened hermit accessible only by crazy fire ritual, who would stroke her hair and provide simple and logical explanations.

In hindsight, _of course_ , it was a dragon.

The paw comes first, talons curving around the sharp slope of the peak. Boulders flake off and crumble away, shaking the ridge she crouches on, but even without that she would be shaking, because the paw is the size of a house. The rest of the beast is incomprehensibly titanic, towering through the mist. Something scaly and thick as a skyscraper wraps around the mountain beneath her ridge – faintly, she realizes that its tail.

A single flap of its wings dispels the remaining mist, and the Great dragon angles her head and regards her with an enormous golden eye.

 _Welcome, keeper of my Heart._

"I don't want your heart," she shouts quickly, too scared to be polite. Her knees go watery. How does one look at something this huge? It reminds her of IMAX theaters, feeling like her eyes are too small and narrow to see the entire picture. "Here, take it back!"

The Great dragon peers at her hand. Bryony glances down. Hot shock shoots down her spine: the pendant had grown, somehow, into a full-fledged knife of black steel, its edges trimmed in red crystal. In one heartbeat it slides back into the small tooth, and then in the next, back to the knife.

 _For a mortal who chose this path, you are very reluctant to embrace the Heart's gifts._

Her mouth feels too dry. "I didn't…choose this. It was an accident. I fell down and stabbed my hand."

If a colossus could shrug! _It matters not. Yours was the hand that drew the blood. So, it begins. As it must._

"How does it not matter?" she demands. "I don't understand how someone can be chosen if they didn't knowingly choose!"

 _Yet you did not knowingly refuse, either._

"That's bullshit."

Heat simmered like anger in the air as the dragon exhaled hotly, steam streaking out her nose. _Do not debate the finer points of language with me! When the shamans and augers met in fear and asked their spirits for salvation, I granted it, but the spell they wove was their own._

How the dragon manages to get closer to Bryony defies possibility, yet somehow the mountain and the beast shift until the dragon's face is level with her own, crowding her back against the rocks on trembling legs. If she dared, Bryony could have touched the iridescent scales. It is unbelievable and paralyzing and yet the dragon is _so beautiful_ , in the way natural wonders are beautiful, beyond the comprehension of man. Bryony traps her free hand behind her.

 _Here is the choice you have now: finish the tasks set in your mortal flesh, or do nothing, and perish._

Bryony's arm begins to ache. "What are the tasks?"

 _At last, you ask the proper questions._

The dragon exhales again, but this time white flame comes out of its mouth. It hits her before she can scream and startles her when it washes down her body, cold and harmless as a bucket of water. It worms its way into her eyes, her ears, her mouth. For a second she drowns, and then the pressure passes and she doubles over in a fit of coughing.

 _I have released your Sight. I cannot grant the truth you seek. You must see it for yourself. Now! Be gone._

#

Morrigan leaps to her feet the moment the outsider groans. Her son is faster and catches the girl as she sags sideways. The fire turns mundanely orange and dies down to embers, winking amongst the whitish coals.

A great breeze flattens the grass. The forest is a clamor of knocking branches and wild leaves that fall silent as suddenly as they moved. The mighty ghost flies away, and the witch watches the shadows until they disappear.

"Some favor," the girl mutters, blinking against the harsh sunlight. "Hey, Kieran. Nice to see you."

Her son gives her a toothy grin. "You smell like dragonfire."

"Thanks?"

Morrigan raises her eyebrows. "Our guest will be hungry soon. She will want something hearty, to regain her strength." It is not a suggestion.

Kieran steadies the girl until she kneels on her own. With a nod, he whistles. Loyal and patience Boogie slinks out from between the ferns and accompanies his human off into the trees.

Bryony sways. When the witch reaches out, she jerks away and lands hard on her elbow. "Don't! Please. Sorry. Really sick of magic spells that don't ask permission first."

"Your experience was frightening." Once again, it wasn't a question.

"Apparently, I volunteered myself for an ancient prophecy. Something about…augurs, and a spell, and dragons coming back."

Morrigan is careful, very careful, to remain calm as she shoves ash over the remaining embers, sketching a ward with her finger over the pit. "Great dragons?"

Bryony shrugs. "How am I supposed to know? We don't have _dragons_ back home." She examines her arm, more critically than before. There is knowledge in her eyes that was not there before, and it makes Morrigan's gut clench. "What's the difference between a...regular dragon and a 'great' one?"

"What is the difference between a rock in a stream bed and the boulder from which it was cleft?" Morrigan shoots back. The girl is not quite as piqued as she ought to be, given her recent ordeal. Truth-fire is brutal, and yet she has already regained her coloring, a healthy flush to her cheeks and chest. If it were possible to look better off…

Indeed, not a moment later the girl rises to her feet unaided, still looking at her inked flesh. It still frightens her, Morrigan knows, but it is now a knowable fear.

"Would you like to return to the cabin? Certainly, you have questions."

The girl nods, eyes hard. There is a brief impasse, where neither wants to lead, to put their back to the other. The distrust is familiar to Morrigan — no one trusts her, except her son and his father, and she can count on one hand the people she herself trusts — but it seems to make the girl uncomfortable.

"Sorry," she says again, dropping her eyes to the floor as she flushes with something Morrigan identifies as shame. "You've been nice, and you didn't have to. I...I'm just...a little shook."

Once, during the Fifth Blight — which feels like Ages ago — Donovan confessed to Morrigan that when he did pray to the Maker, he prayed for second chances. A last meal with his parents. An extra minute with his older brother, to wish him well at Ostagar instead of insulting him, jealous that Fergus would see battle and he would not. A childhood of chances, with his twin sister, to speak up for her when their parents denied her things simply because she was female and he was not.

"I would like," he once said, in the dark of the night when they lay naked on her bedroll, sharing furs and the warmth of their skin, "to do better for others, than has been done to me. I got chances, Lissa didn't. Now she's...hungry, eager for glory and heroism. You know what happened to the king. They are so similar. It makes it hard to sleep."

His regret that night was nothing, compared to after. At her funeral.

It occurs to Morrigan, now, in the meadow by the mirror with this young stranger, that she has been handed something like a second chance. Morrigan knows, more than most, the burden of power you did not ask for.

She knows what it is like to want answers but be afraid to ask. Or worse, to ask and receive falsehoods, misdirection, platitudes, mockery.

She could do better, for this girl, than Flemeth did for her.

Especially if —

"You need not apologize," she says, a bit stiff. Easier said than done. "I will answer your questions. In return, you will answer one for me."

The girl's face brightens, some tension in her back eases. Morrigan thinks of how easy it would be to slip poison into her food, and flinches.

"Seems reasonable. What's your question?"

Morrigan gestures towards the woods, to the path back to the cabin. They walk side by side until the trees crowd in, and when she steps forward to lead the way, the girl falls in behind her. There is a moment of peaceable quiet until the path widens enough for Morrigan to fall back and look her dead in the eyes when she speaks:

"Are you prepared to die, Bryony of Ohio?"

The girl gapes and sputters. _'What?"_

Morrigan grabs her tattooed wrist, yanking her arm straight to examine the smoky ink. Beak and claw, wing and fang. "Prophecy is dangerous, and speaks of magic far older and stronger than the kind sanctioned by the Chantry. These are not only tattoos - they are demands, and they are harsh ones. Desperate measures from a desperate people. It will ask everything of you."

The girl is pale and silent.

"But," Morrigan says slowly. _Do better._ "I am quite familiar with betting against the odds."

"Please," the girl whispers. "I am afraid to die."

"Fates demands many things of its chosen warriors." The witch grips the girl's hand in a way she prays is reassuring. "Fortunately, we need not suffer quietly."

"You'll help?"

"I will try."

The girl smiles. Morrigan looks away.

Hope is a bitter taste on her tongue.


	5. What Fates Impose

**Summary:** In which Bryony becomes a student, and witches scheme as only witches can.

 _What fates impose, that men must needs abide;_

 _It boots not to resist both wind and tide._

~ from Henry IV, by William Shakespeare

#

They spend the rest of the brief walk in silence. Buttery sunlight drenches the cabin clearing, warming the garden and gilding the wings of insects humming through the air. Once more she notes the strange, false quality of the landscape. Too-yellow sunbeams and dragonflies that glowed like tiny jewels.

If anything, it seems _more_ noticeable since her experience with the magical fire. Morrigan, too, looks changed. She exuded danger from the beginning, confidently wearing a mantle of mystery and power, but now Bryony can _literally see_ the air humming in the witch's wake. Bryony feels like she could inspect the finer details, like an inner world might reveal itself if she squints.

She keeps her eyes firmly on the ground.

Boogie woofs as they approach, though he declines to rise from his sprawl, stomach down in the cool shade. He does wiggle his rump invitingly, hind leg twitching when she crouches to scratch right near his stubby tail. The cabin door is propped open with a rock. Inside, the hearth fire spits and snaps. Kieran sets a pitcher on the table and smiles at her.

Bryony blinks.

It's Keiran but it's _more than_ Keiran: just like his formidable mother, the young boy now has an otherworldly aura, a brand new brightness that seems to come from inside his skin.

"Magic," Morrigan says lowly as she strolls by. "That is what magic looks like."

Kieran politely pulls out a chair and gestures for her to sit. An earthenware bowl filled with some kind of meat stew steams appetizingly on the table. "I hope you like rabbit."

"I've never tried it," she admits, right as her stomach growls. She leans over the bowl and inhales deeply. The broth is aromatic and a bit spicy; her mouth waters instantly. "But it smells amazing."

"What do you like to eat in your homeland?" he asks.

She hums thoughtfully, distracted by her first few spoonfuls. "Uh, well, my mom is vegetarian, so we always have salad and fruit lying around."

"But you eat meat?" It seems to genuinely worry him, the notion that he has served her something unpalatable.

She catches his eye and smiles broadly. "I do. You're a very good cook," she says in earnest. He returns her smile.

Morrigan, seated across from her, gestures to the hearth, where Bryony spots the sinew and bone remains of what must have been the rabbit. "Perhaps your canine friend would appreciate a treat?"

"May I eat outside with him?" He asks it in a way that suggests that would be a rare and wonderful occurrence, like dessert and dinner at the exact same time.

Morrigan nods.

Watching the boy gather his things and scamper outside, shutting the door behind him, Bryony sighs. "You don't have to keep sending him away. I'm not going to, I dunno, eat him, or anything."

The witch ignores her. With the door closed the cabin is gloomy again, the shadows thicker, the sun not quite making it through the shutters. Morrigan watches her eat — Bryony notices that her place setting is empty — and after a moment, rises and fetches something off a shelf. A small leather-bound book, tucked between a bowl of dried mushroom caps and a jar of teeth.

The spine cracks in a well-worn place, the pages falling naturally open to reveal a large diagram. The witch rests the book on the table between them. Bryony lowers her spoon. The image on the page swiftly kills her appetite.

A humanoid figure kneels in the center of the left page, lacking any kind of distinguishing features beyond an intricate black tattoo spreading up their arm and across their chest. A familiar serrated knife with red crystalline edges is clutched in their hand, poised to pierce their own heart. Thick scrollwork borders both pages, reminiscent of the predator motifs in her ink: snarling snouts, dripping fangs, bloody claws, barbed wings.

The human has no face and no discernible identity, but something about the tattooed hand and the knife aimed at their heart has her own chest aching. There is _a fear_ there, immense and incalculable fear.

The right side of the page is sooty black. Bryony leans closer and realizes the companion page is not just damaged, but missing entirely with only a fringe of charred paper at the binding to show it ever existed. The pages following are equally unreadable, both fire-marked and wrinkled with water stains. Bits and pieces of symbology and art remain, but she can't tell if they are words or pictures or something in between.

"What is this?" she asks.

Morrigan sighs. "That is my mother's grimoire, a book of spells and-!"

"I know what a grimoire is." Celandine kept her own Book of Shadows in a huge leather journal with thick paper that smelled like cedar and mint.

"My apologies," Morrigan grouses, eyes narrowing. "As I was saying, _this_ grimoire held the only written record I've ever encountered of the ritual that cursed you. It has, unfortunately, been tampered with."

A name — from earlier, in the clearing — resonates through her. "By Yavana?"

If the witch dislikes that she remembers that particular detail, she does not say anything, though her lips thin and a small, hard line appears between her brows, made extra severe by the firelight. "That is irrelevant. _This_ —" she taps her finger against the kneeled figure "— is your future. This is where the curse will lead you. You must prepare."

"To stab myself in the chest?"

The look she receives from the witch is so withering and so undeniably _motherly_ that Bryony hides a grin behind her hand. "To _change_ this. You must understand the curse, and the magic it granted you, if you want a chance at overthrowing it."

Morrigan rises, so quickly it throws Bryony off guard. "Can you meditate?"

"I — sort of?"

"What of combat? Know you any weapons?" She stalks around the table and grabs Bryony's unmarked arm, stretching it above her shoulder to examine the muscle tone — or rather, the lack thereof. Whatever definition she once gained from an adolescence slinging hay bales around the farm vanished in her year at the Academy, where the heaviest things she lifted were bottles of Epoxy resin. As for weapons?

"My homeland isn't exactly at war. I mean, I wasn't a soldier. _Ouch,_ man!" She glares up at the witch as she pinches her arm fat. Morrigan smirks, but not unkindly.

At that moment, the cabin door opens. Kieran shoulders his way inside, Boogie prancing in happy circles around him. Clearly, the rabbit carcass sat well with the hound, who gives the two females an obliging sniff before throwing himself belly up before the fire with a contented _wuff._ Afternoon heat presses against the windows and spills through the doorway. That combined with the food in her stomach has Bryony yawning into her elbow.

Morrigan releases her. "Today, you will rest. Tomorrow, we train. I will return before dawn. If you have need of anything, ask Kieran."

"You're leaving?" she asks, startled.

The witch vanishes into the side room. Unruffled, Kieran collects their lunch dishes in a wooden tub. "Not for long," he says. "She always comes back. Can you play cards?"

"Lessons, Kieran," his mother calls.

The boy deflates.

Morrigan sweeps through the main room, blood red cloak fastened around her shoulders. She carries her staff and a leather satchel. Kieran meets her by the door, reaching up on tiptoes to clasp the back of her neck as she bends down to cup his cheek. They press their foreheads together. Bryony looks away.

"Be safe. You know how to reach me if we have any more unexpected visitors."

"Yes, mother," Kieran intones. Morrigan kisses his brow and strides out the door, tossing the pointed hood over her hair. Within seconds, her footsteps are swallowed by the susurration of the trees as the wind brings the thick smell of rain.

Bryony yawns again, half ready to rest her head against the table. Kieran giggles. "The bed is yours for now," he says encouragingly, rushing ahead of her to rearrange the quilts. "Mother says the Flame of Truth makes you sleepy. I won't wake you up, and neither will Boogie."

"That's good," she murmurs, pausing only long enough to tug off her boots before collapsing into the mattress, straw crinkling as she stretches and shifts. Kieran tucks the quilts around her with a gentleness that makes her heart swell.

He is talking, something about doors or books or cities — black cities? — but she slips readily into sleep, and does not remember her dreams.

#

Admittedly, when Bryony imagined mage training, she did not picture quite so much running.

When she awoke from her nap, the sky beyond the shutters was cloudy, the cabin and clearing hushed in lilac dusk. Night bugs chirped and hum, too melodic to be truly real. Kieran sat at the table, a huge, weathered book cracked open on the table before him. He consulted the yellowed pages studiously, like a scholar well beyond his years, at least until he yawned and scratched his nose.

He heard her shifting and smiled. "You're awake! Did you sleep well? We have leftover stew for dinner. We can eat if you're hungry."

The evening passed in a pleasant haze, lulled by warm food and Kieran's curious, sweet inquiries about her likes and dislikes. He showed her the text he was studying, and upon realizing she couldn't read it, shoved all his own work aside and began to teach her a new alphabet.

By the time the moon rose, she could write her name in Tevene.

Eventually she began to nod off again, and Kieran led her back to the bed. "What about you?" she asked, feeling horribly needy and out of touch. What kind of adult was she, to leave an eight-year-old unattended?

Perhaps she said some of this aloud, for Kieran laughed. "Don't worry about me. I am beyond years," he said brightly. "And I'm not tired yet. Rest well."

She frowned. Beyond years? Not _beyond his years_ , but beyond the entire notion of them? He touches cool fingers to her brow, smoothing out the frown between them, and confusion slides away into the gentle dark…

...which is broken, quite abruptly, when Morrigan _magics_ her out of bed and talks about _running_.

" _How_ far?" Bryony repeats, bewildered, blinking the grit from her eyes as she massages some feeling into her numb, ice-blasted backside. Her clothes from the day before are wrinkled, her hair is a rat's nest, and she desperately yearns for a bath, but Morrigan — irritatingly composed and collected Morrigan — is gesturing towards the mountain, rising protectively above the cabin clearing.

"To the top, and back again. Running, or at least," she pauses, gaze sweeping down Bryony's nonathletic body, "as fast as you can manage."

"And what will running up a mountain teach me about my magic?"

"Magic is like music, and your body, the instrument that manifests it into the physical world. You need endurance, you need breath control, you need discipline. And, since magic cannot always protect you, we will need to introduce you to some kind of physical weapon. Thus, you will need strength. Besides." The witch snickers. "If you want to outrun your destiny." The witch _laughs._ "You will have to be very fast."

"Ha ha," Bryony deadpans, eyeing the sloping rise of the hillside until it is swallowed completely by the trees.

"The path is marked," Morrigan says, waving airly over her shoulder as she turns back towards the cabin. "Try not to pass out. If you get lost, whistle. The mongrel is always underfoot."

 _Wow. Inspirational speaker of the year, right here._

Bryony calls after her. "Where are you going? Doesn't your instrument need _tuned_ as well?"

"The sooner you begin," Morrigan calls back, "the sooner you can bathe."

" _That's_...actually pretty motivating," she admits, sighing sharply, turning to face the woods. "Okay. Sure. Run the mountain. How hard can it be?"

#

"Did you know," Bryony pants, breaking off mid sentence to double over, bracing her hand against the nearest tree for support. "at my stupid, fancy art school, gym class was optional?"

Boogie cocks his head and whines.

"Yeah! Optional. We had electives, like Yoga For The Creative Soul, or T'ai Chi For Lifelong Wellness. We did not have Beginner's Mountain Running!"

Boogie barks, bounding in tight circles.

"Yeah," Bryony wheezes. "I know. _Running._ So exciting. Good boy."

The mountain is taller than it looks.

Or at the very least, it's wider. The trail twists and climbs the slopes so gradually, cutting back and forth around rocks and through breaks in the trees. More side to side than straight up, making her feel like she's been running forever. Where did it end?

Soon, surely. She is high enough to see above the treeline. The cabin and it's gardens sit in a small basin, cradled by the mountain; beyond it there are only trees stretching to the horizon, bruised purple and green by whatever strange magic governs the atmosphere. The mountain peak remains obscured by more looming pines and the thick ferns that cloak the ground and spill across the tops of boulders.

If it wasn't for the wooden signposts, marking the trail with red painted arrows, Bryony might believe the path never ended, but instead twisted on forever in a dappled dream.

Boogie barked encouragingly, and with a fortifying breath, she presses forward.

She makes it another three signposts before the sharp pain in her side overcomes her, breathes sawing harshing in and out of overtaxed lungs. The path here is exponentially rockier, broken by a wide stream. Quicksilver water runs quiet and deep. Boogie takes a flying leap into currents, soaking himself before rushing back to Bryony, spraying her as he shakes off.

"Yikes, that's cold," she laughs, shoving him away, though his massive bulk barely budges against her trembling arms. "Is that water even safe? What exactly is safe here on this...what did she call it? Island? Something, something, dreams and madness?"

Boogie barks.

"Is that your answer to everything?"

 _Bark, bark!_

She rolls her eyes, but her grin is genuine. "Good boy. Where to next?"

The mabari swivels his head towards the trail, where it picks up across the stream. The trees are thick, only a few striations of sunlight reaching the forest floor. The way forward is barely visible.

The shadows between the trees seem to quiver.

Boogie whines. Bryony feels goosebumps ripple across her arms and shoulders. "Maybe we should turn back? I won't tell if you won't."

Birdsong fades abruptly, the wind blowing much colder than before. Boogie growls, hackles rising, and barks at the forest in warning.

The strange silence passes, but the shadows are still too deep, and the sensation of eyes pressing on her skin has her clamoring to her feet and sprinting _away_ , back towards the cabin. Boogie doesn't follow. His bellowing howls echo long after she leaves him behind.

#

It is well past sunset where Celandine ushers the last journalist out to their car. She stands at the head of the drive until the bright glow of their headlights vanishes past the hedgerows. The sun is gone, the last of its warmth leached from the air; the sky lies heavy as blue velvet stretched above the empty fields.

She hasn't let the horses out at night for weeks. She can hear Peachblossom kick the side of his stall in protest. The neglect taps against the surface of her thoughts but it cannot penetrate the anger that buzzes like a barrier of bees beneath her skin.

Void be damned, but she _hates_ journalists.

In the two and half weeks since the 'bombing' at the Faire, Celandine has pretended to mourn her daughter.

As far as the state is concerned, Bryony Wolfe died, alongside her classmates Nora Prescott and Helene Castellanos. There were no bodies to recover, and the police have no major leads on the identity of the 'bomber', yet despite this — or perhaps because of this — the press turned their hungry eyes to her, to the other parents of the victims. She saw the Prescotts and the Castellanos clan once, at the station, weeping in front of the cameras, and escaped out a side exit to avoid confrontation.

What would she have said? _I'm sorry, I never knew your daughters, and no, I didn't try. Why waste that kind of energy on my daughter's bullies? Sorry for your loss. Bye._

The journalists, however, proved much harder to shake, insistent on speaking to the 'local, single mother' who life was 'irrevocably changed by tragedy'. They wanted her tears, they wanted to eat her grief like succulent fruits, they wanted to write about how _strong_ her was, pander her emotions to their readers —

"Leeches," she spits. "They are no better than leeches, Tahoe."

The dog doesn't move from his spot on the porch as she strides off towards the shed. He gives only a half-hearted whine and remains with his head on his paws, facing the dark driveway, waiting for his human to come back.

The moon is barely above the treeline when she unlocks her shed and steps into the gloom. For a solstice ritual, she ought to have circled at high noon, but this magic was...big. Disruptive. Invasive.

Gambling the potency of the solstice sun for the privacy of nightfall was another in a series of risks she'd be taking. Doing magic on this scale was a risk. Calling the Mist? Reaching through the Fade? It goes against everything, every sacrifice Celandine made, every caution she took, in the nineteen years since Bryony was born.

 _Do not stir the waters. Do not walk the Mist. If they find you, they will find her._

It kills Celandine, that she cannot keep her daughter safe _and_ save her. Even if she gets Bryony back, they will never be safe again.

The shed is a single wide room, wooden walls and a cement floor. Low-hanging rafters hang thick with bundles of herbs, flowers, garlic, peppers, stockings stuffed with onion bulbs. Her work table is pushed against the wall, the rug rolled and shoved to the side.

On the floor are two circles. One in chalk, and a wider one in salt.

On a peg by the door, her robe hangs. She strips until bare, body round and strong like the Goddess-As-Mother, and slips her arms through the long sleeves, wrapping the undyed linen around her waist until she can cinch it tight.

On a stand nearby, a piece of quartz charges a bowl of distilled water. Celandine uses it to rinse her hands, and drips three drops on each of her feet.

On the table, her staff rests atop its deerskin wrappings. Extending her hand, she calls in into her open palm. The sweet rush of magic runs down her throat like whiskey.

On the floor, the chalk circle begins to glow, the runes and whorls contained within limned with greenish-white light. Celandine chants, the words steady on her tongue. It expands the borders of her mind like a swelling balloon, until she feels the Mist around her, and beyond its shores, the wild Fade, where all creation in joined by dreams.

There is no threat of demons in the Mist that surrounds Earth; there is nothing much to attract them, since the Mages of the Isle took their secrets and their powers and vanished, their bloodlines hidden across a world that has not concerned itself with magic in countless centuries. Periodically, a demon drifts close enough to sniff out a weak and impressionable mind where it may lurk, ladling out its influence and sipping off the discord the dreamer-host sows in the waking world.

But that is _starvation,_ when compared to the limitless potential of the Fade, of other worlds where magic still burns, beckoning.

She wonders how quickly she might beckon them back, spilling the fullness of her magic into the spell. How rapidly they will swarm.

It takes less an a minute of chanting, spiraling down into her untapped power and pushing it into the circle, before the tiny hairs on her neck and arms stand up and she senses demons gliding, sharks to chum, towards her.

Demons, and — there! Much quieter, much slower, a spirit.

It is a delicate thing, to repel the demons but leave a small, small mousehole in her defenses, where a curious and gentle wisp might slip through.

" _Who calls me?"_

In the circle, a humanoid figure stands, with skin like pure energy or perhaps sunlight. It has no discerning features but she feels its eyes upon her. Mist builds and swirls around its legs, a soundless, churning swell.

"A friend."

It responds in a toneless voice, tinny, as though echoing across a great distance. _"A friend with no name?"_

"Now, I am called Celandine." A shaky inhale. "Before, I was known as Chalice. I seek guidance. I need to cross the Fade and find something lost."

The shape flickers, and seems to stretch, growing taller and more broad. _"Chalice, you say? It has been many Ages since your kind walked the Mist. Why do you choose such danger?"_

"I know. It's not a choice. I have to go. My daughter went through, and she — she is in more danger that I can possibly-!" With those words, all the sorrow, all the true grief she hid away from the grasping hands of the press rises up. Her spell falters, the murmurs of the dark louder and clearer in her ears.

Miraculously, then, the murmurs fade. The spirit shines, brighter than ever. Where before it was formless, it now has the impression of long hair. And horns.

" _Regret is something I know well. You have hidden on the edges of history for too long, and now your daughter hurls towards her own fate with none of your protections."_ The spirit chuckles, their voice growing low, their laugh like a cawing crow. _"Are you prepared to plunge through the abyss? Take care — cling too tightly and you both will break."_

Celandine lifts her chin. Outside, Tahoe paws the door and barks, but it is a distant sound.

"Give me the means. I will pay your price, spirit."

The spirit laughs. _"Spirit? My, my, no. I'm just an old hag who talks too much. If you will pay the price, then pay it. The music plays. We must hurry, or we'll miss our que."_

With a twirl, Celandine reverses her grip on her staff, leveraging the bladed tip until she can drag it across her palm. Blood spills. The Mist turns red. The resulting shockwave cracks the concrete, rattling the window in its pane.

Beyond the door, Tahoe howls.


	6. Crows And Nightingales

_"The moon is no drinker of wine, so I must_

 _compensate. Surely you've heard_

 _the crows and nightingales_

 _egging me on? The day has dispersed_

 _from the courtyards like a gang_

 _of sparrows, and nothing_

 _is left of the world that is not_

 _pecked-over, hard and dark_

 _as the dream of an apple seed."_

\- from _What We Known of Death by Drowning,_ by Nick Lantz

#

On a sunny morning, in the Forest Between, a butterfly lands on the god boy's finger.

Kieran watches it air its wings in the golden sun, kicking his feet lazily through the sticky air. The sun has presence in the sky today, heating the dirt and the trees and the rock beneath his stomach. There are no seasons in this hidden place, not like there were in the world of his birth, but the Fade often responds to the memories of those who dream there.

This place is not _really_ the Fade, and they are not _asleep_ — Kieran ponders this point: everyone is asleep in the way that matters, eyes closed to the truth of the world — but he supposed the same general rule must apply.

Mother dreams, most nights, of the autumn of the Blight, so their place between is usually rainy and crisp, a tease of winter in the breeze.

Her student, well —

He stays out of her dreams. They are too bright and filled with objects and places and languages that confuse him. Wherever she dreams of, asleep by the hearth fire, it is filled with summer sun, interesting bugs, and the faint smell of hay.

 _Whack!_

"Fuck! Are you trying to break my fingers?"

The butterfly darts off. Kieran watches it go, then scoots closer to the edge of the flat-topped rock, resting his chin on his folded arms. In the clearing below, Mother and her student face off, armed with basic quarterstaffs. Mother balances her expertly across her hip, her breathing even though she sweats through her practice clothes.

Several feet away, Bryony sprawls on her backside, staff tangled around her legs. She clutches her unmarked hand, examining it. Even across the distance, Kieran spies reddish welts blooming on her knuckles.

He winces sympathetically. Mother is an...exacting teacher.

"If I wanted to break your bones, I would," Morrigan responds dryly. "Perhaps, if you gripped the staff as I taught you, they would not be so _in the way."_

Bryony's pouts, expression sullen, but only for a second before it melts into exhausted acceptance. "You're right. Let me try again."

"Good," Morrigan says, and Kieran beams. Does her student realize how rare Mother's genuine respect is? Does Mother realize she thinks so well of her pupil?

He tilts his head. Probably not.

They square off. Morrigan calls, "Attack," and Bryony twists and turns her way through a series of high, mid, and low strikes. Though her movements are halting, she knows the form decently enough for a complete novice who had not held a staff until three weeks ago. He wants to cheer her on, but doesn't. Mother would frown at him.

After completing the entire sequence twice, Morrigan calls, "Defend," and goes on the offensive.

It devolves quickly from there.

 _Whack!_

"Hold your form!" Mother orders, following the same high-mid-low pattern as before, but moving faster — the punishing pace of true combat. Bryony falters, missing every second or third block, taking blows to her arms and ribs and thighs. "High! Middle! Low!"

Bryony yells, shoving the next blow off with reckless force, leaving her left side open for a bruising blow from the bottom end of Mother's staff, where a true battle staff would be bladed.

"Stop," she protests. "I can't block that quickly!"

Mother widens her stance, settling low into her hips in a way that promises pain. She lashes out once, still within the form, but faster. Out of order. One strike, then two. "When your destiny takes you beyond this place — " Three strikes, four. "— your enemies will not wait for you to regain your form. They will strike, and you will die, unless you _strike back."_

 _Whack_.

Bryony drops her staff.

Kieran sits up.

There is a song in her blood. Most days, he watches her ignore it, staring at her tattoos in the quiet moments between lessons and flinching away when she thinks no one can see. He can hear it, and listens, even if she doesn't, but now —

It sings. She sings.

"Beautiful," he whispers.

The black knife — the Heart — slides out of the air and into her hand. She lashes out. Red crystal winks likes rubies in the sun. There is a sureness to her movements now, swiping and lunging like the knife is an extension of herself. _And,_ he muses, _it is._ She is no longer _just_ Bryony, but more-than-Bryony.

He leans closer, bracing at the edge of the rock — yes, he sees it now. Her eyes are wholly red, subsumed by magic and blood.

Mother blocks and parries, unfazed, calculating.

Bryony shrieks, reminiscent of a dragon's warcry, leg snapping out to kick Mother's weapon down, knife plunging towards her exposed shoulder.

A white flash, bits of frost dancing in the breeze, and as suddenly as the chaos begins, it stops.

Magical ice encases Bryony's hand and arm, creeping over her elbow, distorting the ink into frosted blurs beneath the shiny blue surface. The force of the spell sends her careening to the ground, where more frost webs across her back, pinning her face first to the ground. She thrashes; the ice groans, but holds. Mother curls her fingers and the frost thickens, chilling the blood.

One moment, then another. Her lips turn blue, but at last, she slackens. The Heart vanishes. The ice inches away in degrees, dissipating into colorless mist, until it too is gone. Bryony doesn't move.

"We are done," Mother finally says, so quiet Kieran can barely make it out, even with his advanced senses. "Go bathe."

Bryony pushes onto hands and knees. Her hair slips out of its tie, falling in sweaty clumps around her face. Her eyes are there normal azure, but dull with fear. "I could have killed you."

"It is _done,_ " Mother says again. "We will discuss this later. You did nothing I did not ask of you. Go. Bathe."

As Bryony pushes to her feet, so does Kieran, slowly creeping back towards the treeline. He barely moves before Mother looks up, directly at him. "You may take your time at the springs," she says to Bryony. "Someone is very behind on his own lessons."

He walks, fast.

"I do so hope he _hurries_ back to the cabin, where he was _asked_ to remain, and is _diligently_ _studying_ when I return," she calls, voice echoing over the rocks, threatening in that way only mothers can achieve. "If not, perhaps he would enjoy weeding the garden, since he _loves_ the outdoors so much."

He walks faster.

#

There is not bathroom, in the cabin. Not that Bryony expected this strange, loosely-Medieval fantasy land to have modern plumbing.

Instead, there is a spring, tucked into the curve of the hillside. Bright, cold water pours down a cleft in the rocks, filling the wide, shallow pool below. Smooth, flat stones cover the bottom and sides, built up into a curving wall on two sides to block the wind. Nearby, there is an outhouse and lean-to, where Kieran showed her their stores of lye soap and linens, ivory combs and polished wooden brushes, powder for her teeth and oil for skin and hair.

It is more cosmetics than she honestly expected, but according to Kieran, the witch has a soft spot for pretty things.

Normally, the cool water soothes her sore muscles, lifting the dirt and sweat from her skin until she feels refreshed, made new.

Today, it reminds her of ice.

"What the _fuck_ ," she groans, splashing water onto her face and dragging it into the roots of her hair. Her bare knees rise above the surface; she curls forward, leaning her forehead against them.

The knife came, when she called it. Time slowed, two heartbeats pulsed in her ears. It was like the first time at the edge of the mirror's clearing, when Morrigan had stopped her from sinking into whatever strange haze the Heart triggered.

Only this time, she had not stopped. Her blood sang until all she saw was red, all she felt was joyous anger, and her body _moved on its own._

Sucking in air, she submerges her head and keeps it there, until her panic subsides.

When she comes up for air, throwing the wet mop of her hair over one shoulder, she lifts her inked arm and examines the tattoo.

In the truth-fire dream, the Great dragon released her...Sight. Morrigan, of course, was frustratingly obtuse as to what that meant.

"Practice your staff," Bryony says, mimicking the witch's deeper cadance. "Practice your breathing. Do push ups. Run the mountain. You can't _see_ until you know what to _look_ for. I'm a scary _fortune cookie,_ rah rah rah."

With a sigh, she flops back. It is deep enough, in the center of the spring, to float on her back, hair fanning out in the waters around her. The sun is pleasant on her bare skin, warming her breasts and the tops of her thighs. Lifting her arm above her, drops of water raining down on her face and chest, she narrows her eyes at the riotous ink.

" _Prophecy is dangerous, and speaks of magic far older and stronger than the kind sanctioned by the Chantry. These are not only tattoos - they are demands, and they are harsh ones. Desperate measures from a desperate people…."_

A desperate _people_.

Kieran has begun teaching her, about the world of Thedas: names of countries, names of gods, races like elves and dwarfs and the giant, horned qunari. It is a dizzying amount of history: wars, religious crusades, betrayals.

It occurs to her, for the first time, that actual people made the Heart, wrote its magics into existence.

Rising up, she splashes to the edge, grabbing the linen towel and hastily drying off. Clean clothes and underthings wait by the lean-to, she tugs them on, sorting through her thoughts.

Morrigan teaches her, amongst many things, how to meditate. How to sink into the inner chambers of her mind, to build up her defenses against ravenous demons. If the Heart and its curse were truly part of her, perhaps there are answers hidden somewhere inside her.

Especially if she asks the right questions.

Out of habit, she reaches for her phone, and curses. "All the infinite powers of the cosmos, but no portable clocks." The sun has barely moved from its place in the midmorning sky. Surely, they will not miss her for an hour.

She settles on her ground, legs crossed, on a flat strip of ground by the outhouse wall. Back straight, arms stretched, palms on her knees, fingers pliant. She lets the sun warm her and the wind tug at pieces of hair. Meditation is tricky — it took her two weeks to empty her thoughts to her teacher's satisfaction — but now she knows enough tricks to fall into _that state_ , where she opens her inner eyes instead of her physical ones.

The chambers of her mind are not rooms, but a garden patch. She envisions it like Celandine's garden back home: meadowgrass and Japanese maples, blooming over beds of dahlias and wild lavender, sweet-smelling ferns and carefully manicured parade roses, delicately small and perfect.

Morrigan's exercises have her bolstering the walls, thickening the stone and hardening the mortar. It has become easy enough, to exist solely within her mind.

Now, though, she drops her awareness _lower_ , expands it to her entire body. Shoulders. Arms. Hand. Heart.

The garden changes: the sky darkens and the blooms close up against the night. The air crackles with the promise of lightning, and Bryony hears two heartbeats. Her own, and the great, slow one that belongs to a creature infinitely larger.

" _You!"_

Bryony turns around.

A woman stands just beyond the garden gate, dressed in ceremonial armor made of animal hides, a mantle of black feathers spilling down her shoulders. Her skin is ghostly, streaked with grey and white tribal markings; the kohl smudged around her black eyes makes them even blacker, twin pools of polished obsidian. Her hair is wild, matted and dirty, maybe brown, maybe lighter.

Her mouth is the most disturbing, stained with smears of red. Bryony doubts its lipstick.

" _Four Great beast, four bloods bled,"_ the woman breathes, trembling like she wants to be closer but can't. " _Are you the vessel? It began and I felt it and I wanted to meet you but you don't come out to play at night."_

Bryony finds her voice. "What's your name? What do you know about this curse?"

" _Curse?"_ the woman recoils. " _You are chosen! Touched by the mighty spirits of the Great ones."_

"The really big dragons? Yeah, we've met."

" _A vessel of vein-blood pure, to...to we...four bloods bled, a vessel of vein-blood pure, to weave the bloodied thread!"_ The woman's eyes are bright, delighted. The burn into Bryony, even with the garden between them. " _For Ages I couldn't remember the song. How foolish, to forget my own words."_

"Did you...make the curse?"

" _Not alone. I demanded help, and they gave it. And I waited, for years, but it was never time. I died waiting. But we don't have to wait any longer, do we? It began!"_

"What began? Please. My name is Bryony." She winces. Probably shouldn't give your name to very creepy brain ghosts, but…. "I'm flying blind, here. If you can tell me anything about this spell, or the knife, or what I'm supposed to do-!"

The woman comes closer, almost mockingly, running a finger along the top of the garden gate. Bryony feels it on her physical body, a nail down her spine. " _Not here. Come to me fully, in your dreams, and I will show you what the other witch cannot."_

"How will I find you?"

" _How did you find me here?"_ The woman laughs. " _You called. Call again! Brangwen will always answer. I know your song, now, and I will never-!"_

Cold water pours down her back. The garden dissolves as she yelps, wrenching her eyes open and twisting to find —

"Kieran!" She feared, for a moment, that it would be Morrigan. Her gut twists with guilt. "What was that for?"

"You were dreaming," he replied, lowering the bucket and biting his lip. "Or starting to. Mother says it is dangerous to dream like that. Also, you're late for lunch."

He extends his free hand, and helps her up. Her backside and her ass are uncomfortably damp. "Sorry. I have a lot on my mind."

" _Brangwen will always answer."_

Kieran leads the way down the short path, 'round the hillside towards the cabin. A steady stream of smoke curls upwards above the trees, smelling like garlic and meat. "Mother feels bad. She says you can pick the subject of your lessons this afternoon." He whirls around to walk backwards, grinning excitedly. "I can tell you about my dad! He's a hero."

"Really?" Her stomach flipped. Kieran never mentioned his father, nor did Morrigan, but his presence lingered: in the third place setting at the table, in the clothing too large for boy or witch, in the golden mirror she'd found amongst the bath things that Morrigan immediately snatched from her hands. "He sounds very brave."

Kieran nods agreeably. "He is on a quest now, somewhere far away, but he's gone on lots of quests, so I'm not worried. One time, he saved an entire village from demons by entering a young lord's dreams, and freeing him."

 _Walking through a dream?_

"You could tell me about it," she said, as casually as she could manage. Kieran brightens until his joy outshines the sun.

Oh, she is going straight to Medieval fantasy hell, exploiting a child like this, but she needs answers, and Brangwen has them.

A small, desperate voice reminds her, _You should ask Morrigan._

Morrigan, who knows more than she shares.

Morrigan, who provoked her into a blood rage and then froze her to the ground.

Morrigan, who promised to help her….

"I'd love to hear about it," she says, slinging an arm around his shoulders as they approach the cabin. Boogie bursts from the doorway, barking merrily, and runs to meet them.

#

Bryony has a plan.

It isn't a very _good_ plan, but these are unusual times.

Kieran's tale was a mixed blessing. As he regaled her with the Hero of Ferelden exploits in Redcliffe, Morrigan grew more and more statuesque, hardened by something akin to grief. She listened to the adventure until Kieran got to the part where Morrigan herself becomes a character — the apostate witch, a ritual, a journey into the Fade with the help of lyrium from Kinloch Hold — and then stood abruptly, jostling the dinnerware.

"Language lessons, after lunch. Both of you," she orders shortly.

Kieran's face fell. "Mother, this is the best part."

"It's fine," Bryony cut in, channeling Nora, her fox-like way of observing without directly _looking_ at someone. "It's not like you have any lyrium here."

Morrigan's gaze flickered to the back room, then immediately away. Bryony innocently sipped her mead.

"Finish the story, Kieran. I will be back for dinner," the witch said, softer this time, before stalking out the door.

Morrigan did not return for dinner, but shortly thereafter. She seemed restless, pausing only to kiss Kieran and grab the grimoire, before disappearing into the back garden. There is a lone tree, closer to the cabin than the rest, and she sat beneath it in the falling dark. Leaving Kieran and Bryony alone.

So, she waits until Kieran falls asleep in the large bed, curled up on one side with Boogie flopped at his feet.

She waits even longer until Kieran begins to snore. Listens for footfalls. The night is thick with crickets and cicadas; she couldn't hear Morrigan if she wanted to. It's a risk, but she takes it.

Rising from her bedroll by the hearth, she slips into the side room. It is smaller than she imagined, a crowded work table, a rack of cloaks, a lopsided chest of very small drawers brimming with odds and ends — and on top, a shelf of potions.

And at the end, a gently glowing potion, casting blue shadows on the walls.

She grabs it and shoves it down her shirt.

Morrigan is still beneath the tree when she steps outside, a brooding shadow broken only by glimpses of her pale skin as her hands pensively flip through the grimoire. Bryony lifts her hand in greeting, grabbing the lantern from its hook by the door, _casually_ going to the outhouse like a _casual_ person.

She steps on a branch and nearly screams. Casually.

The mountain spring glows like quicksilver in the moonlight, a peaceful visage in the quiet night. Bryony finds the same patch of land and settles into her pose. In Kieran's story, the mages drank lyrium, fell asleep, and walked the Fade as though through the waking world.

"Simple enough," she says, palming the little bottle with sweaty hands. "Okay. Bottom's up."

Lyrium tastes like ozone, like licking a rock that's been struck by lightning. It doesn't go down her throat as much as it goes through her blood, lighting up her veins like live wires. She feels like a before and after picture: your brain versus your brain on _lyrium._ Dull greys versus reds and yellows and _energy._

It happens like before, only faster and bigger. She breathes in, she relaxes her eyes and jaw, but instead of settling gently into her inner landscape, she flies out of herself. Beyond herself. She is barely aware of her physical body slumping over, the empty bottle rolling out of her hand.

The Fade is...like the Forest Between, but...surrealist. The trees are taller, clawing towards a ghoulish moon that bleeds like watercolor into the starless sky around it. There are elements that make no sense, as there are in dreams: birds frozen mid-flight, animals with human masks, a great black island floating in the distance.

She is not by the spring, but on the mountain, near the signpost at the river where she always turns back. In her dreams, the river is wider, wilder. Shadows weave and dart beneath the surface.

There is also a bridge, framed by an arch of mammoth bones. Candles drip wax that falls in reverse, beading up into the air.

"Brangwen?" she calls.

A cackling laugh echoes from the forest beyond. Brangwen appears _behind her_ and grabs her arm. "Yes, good, you are very resourceful," she praises, tugging Bryony across the bridge. "Come, come!"

She drags her over the bridge and around the bend in the path, where a huge cave mouth looms, maw-like, out of the mountain side before them. More strange candles, and somewhere far off, someone beats a panicked, arrhythmic drum song.

Brangwen pulls in her until they are just beneath the rock shelf, then tugs her down to sit on a rock. She does not release her arm. "Show me the Heart, vessel," she begs. "It is the pride of my work. I have not seen it in Ages."

"Are you a mage?" Bryony asks instead, shifting as far as she can away from the wild-eyed shaman. "Are you...dead?"

"I am — I was an Auger of my hold. I put _all_ of myself into this spell." At last, she releases Bryony, but only to tug aside her furs, revealing a puckered, badly healed wound on her chest. Above her heart. "I gave it life by giving my life. If the Heart lives, then I live. Now, show it to me!"

Bryony cannot deny her hunger. She lifts her hand to the necklace, resting on her breastbone, and touches the claw. When she draws her hand away, it is a knife instead.

The shaman gasps, reverently, tears pooling in her eyes. "I felt it today. When you used the blood song. That is when I knew it had truly begun."

Her pulse spikes. In the dreamy forest beyond, birds and bats caw and shriek, her own panic spilling into the Fade around them. She remembers in too much detail the sensation of her mind clouding, her body succumbing to a savage song that came from her blood. How she watched from behind her own eyes as her body attacked, relentless as a wildfire.

Brangwen coos, gently stroking her tattooed arm, always moving her hand away from the Heart, as though she yearns to touch it but can't. "Don't _fear_ the Heart and its gifts. They are protection."

"I'm not worried about protecting myself," Bryony protests. "I could have killed Morrigan! She is — I only know two people, and I almost killed one and orphaned the other because I couldn't control my own body."

Brangwen frowns, disdainful. "You hate what you do not understand. You wanted to fight back, so the Heart fought back. Blood is _power_ , vessel. It is identity, secrets, memory. The Heart can uncover secrets, it can find what is lost. It will grant you whatever you ask for."

"What does it want in return?" Bryony asks, though she knows the answer. She has read enough fairytales to know the rules.

"Whatever _it_ asks for," Brangwen whispers, lovingly. She grabs Bryony's wrist, lifting the Heart up until she can lean over and kiss the knife's edge, tongue flicking out to lick the red crystal. The shaman leans in until the knife pushes in, just enough to draw a thin red line of blood.

It hits Bryony like a gut punch — visions, flashes of a village in the treetops, snow-covered mountains in the distance. A hut, a pit of stones that steam when a hand drips water on their heated surface. _Brangwen_ , chanting, drawing a knife across her palm. Beads of blood sizzling on the rocks.

The Heart pulses: knows Brangwen, is Brangwen.

She jerks away, so fast and violent that she falls backwards off her seat. Brangwen howls with laughter, wiping blood and tears on the back of her hand. "That is a taste! A little cut, and am I known to you. A little blood and you can find the owner, no matter how far they wander. A _lot_ of blood?"

She laughs harder, doubling over. Bryony scoots away, wants to run, but something keeps her there. A tugging, like a lodestone in her gut, that points to Brangwen. The Heart is warm in her white-knuckled grip.

"What happens," she asks, pushing words through her fear, "when the Heart gets...what it wants?"

Brangwen straightens, laughter dying abruptly. Her eyes burn like black flames. "Four Great beasts, four blood bled, 'neath once and future skies…."

She slides to her knees, crawling towards Bryony until their chests are flush, Brangwen's eyes like the all-knowing abyss. "The bloodied path, at long last tread," she continues, resting a bloodied hand on her cheek, "makes dragons, once more _fly._ "

Bryony opens her mouth — _what the fuck, can you elaborate, that didn't answer my question? —_ but thunder booms in the sky, the mountain rattled, and it begins to rain inside the cave —

— as Bryony crashes back into her physical body.

She wakes up to Morrigan standing above her, throwing a now-empty bucket aside and fisting Bryony's nightshirt. She yanks her close, like she did the first morning they met, but those threats are empty compared to the _rage_ in her eyes now.

"You _foolish_ imbecile," Morrigan hisses, shaking her. "What in the void _possessed_ you to do something so reckless! 'Tis a miracle you aren't a mindless abomination."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Bryony shakes, freezing wet in the night that seems to grow colder by the second.

Lightning cracks across the sky, and it begins to rain, cold and relentless. Bryony thinks immediately of the night the Fade released her into this place. The storm, her confusion, the witch looming above her.

Morrigan releases her with a frustrated shove. "There is no time for your apologies. Get up! You're inexperienced fumbling in the Fade has not gone unnoticed. Kieran felt you use the Heart, and he is a child who only barely understands his powers."

As if summoned, the boy appears through the trees, _sprinting_ towards them, Boogie a sleek companion at his side. "What comes?" he asks, gasping for breath. He holds a single raven feather into the air.

Morrigan pales.

" _Get up,"_ she shouts, hoisting Bryony to her feet and shoving her towards Kieran. "Go, stay together, follow Kieran, but you must go _now._ "

It happens very suddenly.

One moment there are three people and a dog in the clearing. In the next, there are four, an intruder stepping through a portal of shadows as effortless as one might shrug through a curtain. An imposing woman in red robes, chains falling from her feathered mantle to wrap around a muscles waste. She faces Morrigan, her profile to Bryony, Kieran at the edge of the trees behind her.

She grins. Bryony's gapes. It is Morrigan's grin, on an older, crueler face.

"Well well," the intruder rasps. "It has been a long time, hasn't it, _sister._ "

Morrigan, to her credit, only shows her fear in the tight, desperate way she clutches her staff. Her mouth twists into a snarl, and she spits her name like the foulest poison. " _Yavana."_

Tellari's Beast is fearsome, violence etched into every angle of her face. She seems unfazed by the storm churning around them, singularly focused on the witch across the clearing. "So rude of you, not inviting me sooner to your lovely sanctuary. Is this where you absconded with that dog lord you share your bed with?"

Her tone is syrupy, deceptively pleasant though every cell in Bryony screams that there is nothing pleasant about this situation. Morrigan feared this, wanted to keep this place away from others, but especially Yavana —

The truth hits her. _Yavan doesn't know about Kieran._

The intruder witch still talks. "Is he here, your little hero? I heard he vanished. Unreliable, but that's men." She turns her head, scanning the clearing.

 _If she looks behind her, she will learn about Kieran._

Bryony acts without thinking, snatching a stone off the ground and throwing it. It hits the witch in the shoulder.

"Hey, ugly!"

Yavana whips around, alighting upon Bryony.

Unseen, Kieran slips into the woods.

She can feel the witch's eyes on her skin, can see the moment she recognizes the tattoos. The dawning hunger in Yavana's eyes makes her knees quake.

"Who, precious girl, are _you?"_ Yavana exhales.

Just before Morrigan strikes.

The ground beneath Yavana glows, a red hex spiraling out across the grass. Yavana jerks and freezes, hand halfway stretched towards Bryony, paralysed but for the furious flash in her eyes. They have seconds, at most, before she is free again.

"Run!" Morrigan screams, and Bryony obeys.

She tears blindly through the forest, crashing through wet ferns and branches that sluice icy rain down her back. A lightning flash edges the threes in greenish white. She trips out into the clearing, the cabin before her. If she can find a weapon, or maybe those potions —

"No!" Kieran grabs her; he must have waited, or perhaps gathered his own supplies. He wears a fitted leather jerkin, hastily tied over his own tunic. "There is no time. This way! We must get to the clearing. Mother will meet us there."

The ground shakes. Almost on cue, a spiral of ice twists towards the raging sky, mirrored by a column of flame. The sky around them shreds like tattered silk. A witch war, a clash of ages, literally rending the world around them.

Kieran slides his hand into her own, and pulls. "Come on!"

They sprint through the storm, Boogie on their heels, until the trees break away and they are once again beneath the open sky. Across the clearing, the mirror looms like a doorway to nightmares, blacker than the sky behind it. She expects him to stop by the sodden firepit, within the protection of the circle, but he pulls her onwards. Towards the mirror.

"Kieran-!"

"Mother will come here, as soon as she can, and we must be ready to go. Here, I grabbed an extra cloak," he explains, shouting over the pounding rain. Bryony takes it, touched by his thoughtfulness, though it does little against the ferocity of the downpour. "I haven't met my aunt before, but Mother says she is not good family. She must not catch either of us."

Boogie's sharp howl is their only warning.

Bright light, blue like lyrium, flashes on the far side of the clearing, and Yavana steps into existence.

It happens very quickly.

Yavana flings out her staff, a great wave of reddish energy flattening the meadowgrass as it rushes towards them. Morrigan steps through her own blue portal, a heartbeat too late, Kieran's name on her lips. Bryony lurches forward, thinking only to protect Kieran, to hide the child behind her own body.

Kieran — _Kieran, Kieran, Kieran —_ moves quicker. He steps before her and shoves.

Around her neck, the Heart flashes.

Her back hits the mirror.

And she keeps falling.

#

The darkness is deep and numbing, and incredibly, unbelievably cold.

It swallows her, sucks her down. The darkness is very wet.

 _Water_ , a voice supplies. _The darkness is water_.

She thrashes and kicks, tumbling head over heels. Waves, _waves_ , push and pull her, dragging relentlessly at her hair and clothes. Somehow, she unfastened her cloak, kicking the heavy garment away. She doesn't fight the next swell, letting it carry her up, up, up.

She breaks the surface with a gasp, sucking in air. The sky is very far above her, choked with roiling clouds, as though the very same storm that delivered her to Morrigan brought her here to this — shipwreck?

 _Morrigan! Kieran! Fuck —_

A wave crests above her head, seafoam spilling into her gaping mouth. She is pushed under but fights back up. Shipwreck — one _half_ of a ship sticks out of the stormy waters, devoured by the tumultuous sea. Barrels, crates, a splintered mast roll in the waves. The wind dies down, and she manages to swim to the nearest piece of flotsam — the remains of a door — and haul herself up.

It wavers and dips, but holds. She barely has time to find a solid grip before the ocean swells beneath her, and drags her on.

#

Somehow, she stays afloat, through the death throes of the storm. Even when it is no more than spitting mist and wind, she huddles, doubled over with her head between her arms. There is barely any feeling left her in her limbs, her nightshift plastered against her skin.

 _Perhaps I will drift into port eventually,_ she thinks faintly, _and they will find my skeleton exactly like this._

Thinking becomes difficult, after that. She doesn't know how long she drifts.

#

Her fevered daze is broken when the ocean heaves her up. No — not the ocean. Hands. Tanned, weathered hands drag her makeshift raft closer to a boat, a real boat, and hands drag her on board.

They — many hands, there is more than one of them — mutter to one another in a language she doesn't understand. The sun is bright and hot. They toss a blanket around her shoulders and she takes it gratefully, shielding her salt-crusted eyes.

The rocking motion of a real boat is soothing. She is so, so grateful to be out of the sea. The rowboat stills, and jerks. The noise quadruples in volume. Bryony peeks out from behind the blanket, and gasps.

A ship — a real, huge ship. Sailors swarm the rigging and crowd the surface, hauling waterlogged crates and barrels out the small boat, now hoisted up and level with the deck. It is furious hive of activity and shouting and she _doesn't understand them_ —

Someone behind her scoops her up and passed her off to another man, who sets her on the desk. Her knees give out and he lets her collapse, eyeing her distrustfully. She is cold — or is she hot — and shakes her head, slowly, and then more rapidly as he repeats the same thing over and over. A question, definitely, but what?

It's overwhelming chaos. She buries her face in her hands.

"Move please!" A cheerful voice rings out, and Bryony snaps her head up. "You are in my way — _oh_ , you terrors, you've scared her. I don't think she speaks Antivan."

An elf kneels down in front of her — at least, it has to be an elf, because ears? Right? — and waves, a sunny smile on her angular face. Tribal tattoos are inked around her eyes and cheeks, disappearing into her thick, black hair. She wears loose blue robes and is a little sunburned and _is an elf_ , but when she speaks, Bryony can understand, and listens.

"Och, you are very wet," the elf says sympathetically. "And sick! Do you feel feverish?"

"Who are you?" Bryony asks, eyes watering. Her throat burns. "Where am I?"

The elf beams. "I'm Merrill. This is a pirate ship. Well, I'm not sure I'm supposed to call it a _pirate_ ship, out loud. Something about our public image. It's not my ship, you see-!"

"No, it isn't, sweetness."

The crowd on the deck parts, allowing a very tall, dark-skinned woman to stride through. She wears a white shirt, calf-high boots and very little else, gold jewelry winking in the sun. A blue bandana keeps her wind tossed hair out of her face.

"This is _my_ ship," she says, in heavily accented Trade. She stops behind Merrill, almost protectively, and leans down, one hand on the elf's shoulder and the other toying with the dagger strapped to her thigh.

"I'm Isabela. Who the _bloody fuck_ are you?"


End file.
